Aug 2026· Frontiers in Microbiology· Vol 17· 0 citations· 234 references
Medicine
TL;DR
This review uniquely integrates the biochemical, physiological, and molecular mechanisms of PGPR in plant nutrition and stress mitigation while critically analyzing contradictory field results and highlighting newly characterized strains and sustainable tools for climate-resilient agriculture.
Abstract
Climatic stresses impede plant growth and development, leading to significant reductions in crop yield and biomass production. These challenges are exacerbated by global population growth and increasing desertification, which threaten global food security. Although advanced agricultural technologies, including smart irrigation systems, optimized cropping calendars, and stress-tolerant cultivars, have been developed to mitigate these stressors, their large-scale adoption remains limited due to high costs, technical complexity, and infrastructural constraints. Therefore, sustainable, eco-friendly, and cost-effective strategies are urgently required to ensure adequate crop productivity for the growing global population. At this crucial juncture, there is a pressing need to transition toward sustainable agricultural practices that strengthen plant resilience through natural and biological mechanisms. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) represent a promising biological approach for enhancing crop productivity by improving nutrient availability and mitigating the adverse effects of climate-induced abiotic and biotic stresses. This review uniquely integrates the biochemical, physiological, and molecular mechanisms of PGPR in plant nutrition and stress mitigation while critically analyzing contradictory field results and highlighting newly characterized strains and sustainable tools for climate-resilient agriculture.
Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures (cold, hot), heavy metal toxicity, flooding, pollutants, and nutrient imbalances are emerging as major threats to global agri-food and nutritional security, significantly constraining crop productivity and resilience. Nowadays, the situation has deteriorated owing to the accelerated and profound alterations in global climatic patterns. It is utmost need to understand and find out the various adaptive and alleviative practices to reduce the impact, in which plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have the ability to assuage the negative impact of the various stresses and enhanced seed spices productivity and profitability. The interface between PGPR and crops under various stresses are positive worldwide. PGPR play a significant role in enhancing nutrient availability in the soil–plant–microbe system. Additionally, PGPR help lower ethylene levels, increase the concentration of osmolytes, and defend crops from oxidative injure under a diversity of environmental multiple stresses. The application of PGPR to seed spice crops represents a promising strategy to enhance productivity and improve plant resilience under various stress conditions. This review highlights the role of PGPR in mitigating abiotic stresses in seed spice crops and underscores the need for future research to develop effective, long-lasting microbial formulations that support sustainable cultivation under multiple stress conditions.
H. Parewa, V. Meena, Ramniwas Choudhary et al.· Discover Soil· 0 citations
The need for the most up-to-date, environmentally friendly techniques of controlling plant diseases and pests necessitates keeping an eye out for effective tools that provide a safe environment for human and animal fitness. In recent years, the usage of plant biostimulants (BS), which are derived from various organic materials through hydrolysis reactions, has increased. Soil microbes and plants immediately absorb these Biostimulants, which often consist of peptides, amino acids, polysaccharides, humic acids and phytohormones with less energy requirement. This benefits not only growth but also the yield and quality of the harvested grain or fruit. These items are intended to promote and increase plant metabolism, reduce stress, etc., rather than to supply nutrients. These days, a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses hinder plant development, seed germination and seedling growth due to shifting climatic conditions, which reduces biological and economic yields. Plant growth regulators (PGRs) helps plant in mitigating different abiotic stresses and also enhances the adaptability of plants in stress conditions. A variety of PGRs, including ethylene (ET), salicylic acid (SA), abscisic acid (ABA) and jasmonates (JAs), are linked to improving plants' ability to respond to various stimuli. On the other hand, under both normal and stressful environmental conditions, PGRs like auxin, cytokinins (CKs), gibberellins (GAs) and relatively novel PGRs like strigolactones (SLs) and brassinosteroids (BRs) are engaged in plant growth and development. These PGRs are crucial for regulating stress adaptation through modulates physiological, biochemical and molecular processes and activation of the defense system, upregulating of transcript levels, transcription factors, metabolism genes, and stress proteins at cellular levels.
Hena Parveen, Manish Kumar, S. Kumari et al.· Genetics and Molecular Resea...· 0 citations
Climate change represents a major global challenge that threatens agricultural productivity, ecosystem stability, and food security by intensifying abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, and extreme temperatures. Solanaceous crops, which are economically and nutritionally important worldwide, are highly sensitive to these stresses, leading to oxidative damage, impaired photosynthesis, and reduced yield and quality. Nanotechnology has emerged as a promising approach to mitigate these adverse effects. Due to their unique physicochemical properties, nanoparticles (NPs) enhance nutrient uptake, improve water-use efficiency, and regulate plant metabolic processes. They also activate antioxidant defense systems, reduce reactive oxygen species (ROS), and improve the delivery efficiency of growth regulators and bioactive compounds. This review synthesizes recent literature on abiotic stress responses in solanaceous crops and evaluates the role of nanoparticles as mitigation strategies, focusing on physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms. The scope includes drought, salinity, and temperature stresses, as well as nano-enabled applications such as nano-carriers and nano-sensors. Overall, nanoparticle applications improve plant tolerance by enhancing antioxidant activity, regulating stress-responsive pathways, and improving resource-use efficiency, thereby contributing to increased crop productivity under climate change conditions. However, challenges related to nanoparticle toxicity and environmental risks remain, emphasizing the need for optimized and safe application strategies. These findings highlight the potential of nanotechnology as a sustainable tool to enhance the resilience and productivity of solanaceous crops under changing climatic conditions. This review highlights that nanoparticles can enhance abiotic stress tolerance in solanaceous crops by improving antioxidant activity, photosynthesis, nutrient uptake, and water-use efficiency under adverse environmental conditions. Overall, nanotechnology represents a promising strategy for sustainable crop production under climate change, although further studies are needed to ensure its environmental safety and long-term applicability. This review provides a comprehensive overview of abiotic stress effects on solanaceous crops and highlights the role of nanoparticles as a sustainable tool to enhance plant tolerance, productivity, and resilience under climate change conditions.
Mohamed K. Abou El-Nasr, Karim M. Hassan, Ahmed N. Abdelhamid et al.· Sustainability· 0 citations
The role of PGPF in climate-resilient cropping systems and circular bioeconomy frameworks, including waste valorization and biofertilizer development is highlighted and key limitations such as host specificity, environmental variability, and scalability challenges are identified.
Kallol Das, A. Sarker, D. Deepo et al.· Phyton· 0 citations
Climate change has worsened soil salinity through rising temperatures, sea water intrusion, irregular rainfall patterns, and increased evapotranspiration, making salinity one of the major constraints in soybean cultivation worldwide. Salinity stress inhibits plant growth, disrupts nutrient uptake, reduces photosynthesis, induces oxidative stress, and ultimately decreases crop productivity. In addition, excessive salt accumulation deteriorates soil structure, suppresses beneficial microbial activity, and limits nutrient availability, thereby threatening soil health and sustainable agricultural production. Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) can be utilized as an environmentally friendly alternative approach to enhance plant tolerance to saline conditions while reducing dependence on chemical fertilizers and other external inputs. This review examines the extent to which beneficial rhizobacteria improve soybean growth and productivity under salinity stress conditions. The method employed was a systematic literature review combined with bibliometric analysis based on network visualization using VOSviewer. Literature sources were obtained from Scopus covering the period 2020–2026, with article selection conducted using inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in 22 relevant articles. The findings indicate that bacteria such as Bradyrhizobium japonicum, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Azospirillum brasilense, and several other halotolerant bacteria significantly improve soybean tolerance to salinity stress through phytohormone production, biological nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, regulation of Na⁺/K⁺ ion balance, osmoprotectant accumulation, exopolysaccharide production, and activation of antioxidant defense systems. Furthermore, PGPR substantially contribute to soil health by improving soil aggregation, enhancing microbial biodiversity, stimulating nutrient cycling, increasing soil enzyme activities, and improving nutrient-use efficiency in saline soils. Quantitatively, PGPR application has been reported to increase soybean growth and productivity by approximately 15–45% under saline conditions while reducing salt-induced physiological damage. These findings highlight the strong potential of PGPR as a sustainable long-term strategy for saline land management to restore soil health, strengthen climate resilience, and enhance soybean productivity.
M. Ikbal, F. Hibatullah, N. N. Kamaluddin et al.· International Journal of Lif...· 0 citations
Abiotic and biotic stresses significantly threaten global food security and agricultural sustainability. Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 15 (Life on Land), requires sustainable agricultural approaches. Recently, plant growth-promoting bacterial (PGPB) consortia have emerged as an effective strategy for enhancing crop productivity under stress conditions. These microbial communities improve plant growth through mechanisms such as nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, phytohormone production, siderophore secretion, ACC deaminase activity, induction of systemic resistance, while enhancing nutrient uptake, antioxidant activity, osmotic regulation, and stress-responsive signalling pathways, thus improving plant health and productivity. Compared with single-strain inoculants, consortia provide synergistic effects that enhance rhizosphere colonization, microbial survival, and plant-microbe interactions, thus contributing to the achievement of the SDGs. Recent advances in modern tools such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics, and machine learning for predictive microbiome modelling, as well as field-level engineering approaches such as encapsulation technologies, biochar-based carriers, seed coating, and root microbiome editing, have accelerated the development of efficient microbial formulations for sustainable agriculture. This review discusses the potential of PGPB consortia as a sustainable solution for boosting crop productivity under stress. The integration of consortia into modern agricultural practices can play a crucial role in supporting resilient farming systems and advancing the global SDG agenda. This review highlights the key limitations, challenges, and research gaps associated with PGPB consortia, as well as future prospects for enhancing crop productivity.
