Plant-Microbe Interactions in Agro-Ecological Perspectives

This books presents an updated compilation on fundamental interaction mechanisms of microbial communities with the plant roots and rhizosphere (belowground) and leaves and aerial parts (aboveground). Plant rhizopshere recruits its own microbial composition that survive there and help plants grow and develop better under biotic and abiotic conditions. Similar is the case with the beneficial microorganisms which are applied as inoculants with characteristic functions. The mechanism of plant-microbe interactions is interesting phenomenon in biological perspectives with numerous implications in the fields. The First volume focuses on the basic and fundamental mechanisms that have been worked out by the scientific communities taking into account different plant-microbe systems. This includes methods that decipher mechanisms at cellular, physiological, biochemical and molecular levels and the functions that are the final outcome of any beneficial or non-beneficial interactions in crop plants and microbes. Recent advances in this research area is covered in different book chapters that reflect the impact of microbial interactions on soil and plant health, dynamics of rhizosphere microbial communities, interaction mechanisms of microbes with multiple functional attributes, microbiome of contrasting crop production systems (organic vs conventional), mechanisms behind symbiotic and pathogenic interactions, endophytic (bacterial and fungal) interaction and benefits, rhizoplane and endosphere associations, signalling cascades and determinants in rhizosphere, quorum sensing in bacteria and impact on interaction, mycorrhizal interaction mechanisms, induced disease resistance and plant immunization, interaction mechanisms that suppress disease and belowground microbial crosstalk with plant rhizosphere. Methods based on multiphasic and multi-omics approaches were discussed in detail by the authors. Content-wise, the book offers an advanced account on various aspects of plant-microbe interactions and valuable implications in agro-ecological perspectives.

Dhananjaya P. Singh is presently Principal Scientist in Biotechnology at ICAR-National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, Maunath Bhanjan, India. He did his Masters' degree from G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar and Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. His research interests include plant-microbe interactions, bioprospecting of metabolites of microbial and plant origin, microbe-mediated stress management in plants, metabolomics-driven search for small molecules and bioinformatics in microbial research. He was involved with the development of supercomputation infrastructure facility for agricultural bioinformatics in microbial domain at ICAR-NBAIM under National Agricultural Bioinformatics Grid (NABG) program of ICAR. He has been awarded with various prestigious awards including Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Award for Scientific Excellence in 2016 from Marina Labs. Currently he has published more than 134 publications including 73 research papers, 16 scientific reviews, 25 book chapters, 20 magazine articles, several workshop manuals/training modules, three edited books and one Indian patent.

Harikesh B. Singh is presently Professor & Head, Department of Mycology and Plant Pathology at Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. He served the State Agriculture University, Central University and CSIR Institute in teaching, research and extension roles. His major research focus is on bioinnoculats, biological control of plant pathogens and nano-biotechnology. In recognition of Prof. Singh’s scientific contributions and leadership in the field of plant pathology, he has been honored with several prestigious awards, notable being CSIR Technology Prize for Biological Sciences by Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, M.S. Swaminathan award by Society for Plant Research, Vigyan Bharti Award, Prof. V.P. Bhide Memorial Award, Society for Plant Research, Scientist of Excellence Awards, BRSI Industrial Medal Award, Jyoti Sangam Award, Akshyavat Samman, Distinguish Scientist Award by the Society for Research Development in Agriculture, Prof. Panchanan Maheshwari Medal by Indian Botanical Society,  Rashtriya Gaurav Award by IIFS, Plant Pathology Leader Award by IPS, CSIR Award for S&T Innovation for Rural Development (CAIRD), Environment Conservation Award, Vigyan Ratna by UP Council of Science and Technology. Dr. Singh has been the Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Currently, he is also serving as an associate/academic/board editor with journals of international repute. Professor Singh has published more than 300 publications, several training modules/manuals, edited 17 books and 20 patents (USA, Canada, PCT).

Ratna Prabha obtained her Master's degree in Bioinformatics from Banasthali Vidyapeeth and Ph.D. degree in Biotechnology from Mewar University, India. She has been awarded with SERB-National Post Doctoral Fellowship of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and is presently affiliated to Chhattisgarh Swami Vivekanand Technical University, Bhilai. She has been engaged in developing various digital databases on plants and microbes, published 2 edited books, many book chapters, various research papers and review articles in the journals of International repute. Her current research interest lies in microbe-mediated stress management in plants, database development, comparative microbial genome analysis, phylogenomics and pangenome analysis of prokaryotic genomes and metagenomics data analysis. She has completed several bioinformatics demonstration tasks at different National training programs on bioinformatics and computational biology. She has been awarded Young Scientist at G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, S&T, SIRI, Telangana and CGCOST, Chhatisgarh.