review · Canadian Journal of Microbiology
Conventional agriculture has relied heavily on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides since the Green Revolution, causing considerable environmental harm and risking human health. Developing environmentally friendly alternatives is vital to foster sustainable farming and reduce dependence on synthetic agrochemicals. Bioinoculants, which utilise beneficial microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi found in soil and plant microbiomes, present a viable alternative. These beneficial microbes can boost crop production and yield by directly stimulating plant growth, controlling diseases, and supplying essential mineral nutrients. However, widespread routine deployment in agriculture requires rigorous confirmation that selected microbial strains are entirely nonpathogenic and genuinely promote plant survival. To address this need, established methods exist for discovering effective plant-growth-promoting bacteria across diverse soil and plant environments, alongside protocols to thoroughly evaluate their safety for natural ecosystems and human health.
Chemical agrochemicals have caused widespread environmental degradation and human health hazards. Replacing synthetic fertilisers and pesticides with beneficial soil and plant bacteria provides an eco-friendly pathway to maintain agricultural productivity. Establishing robust frameworks to discover and test these microorganisms ensures that biological alternatives can support sustainable food security without introducing dangerous pathogens into ecosystems or the food supply chain.
The described discovery and safety evaluation frameworks can assist agricultural biotechnology firms and bioinoculant developers seeking to identify effective, nonpathogenic bacterial strains. These approaches facilitate the formulation of commercial biofertilisers and biopesticides intended to replace synthetic chemicals. Because the focus is on discovery and safety assessment methodologies, this work sits at an early stage of the commercial development pipeline.
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The Green Revolution developed new crop varieties, which greatly improved food security worldwide. However, the growth of these plants relied heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which have led to an overuse of synthetic fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides with serious environmental consequences and negative effects on human health. Environmentally friendly plant-growth-promoting methods to replace our current reliance on synthetic chemicals and to develop more sustainable agricultural practices to offset the damage caused by many agrochemicals are proposed herein. The increased use of bioinoculants, which consist of microorganisms that establish synergies with target crops and influence production and yield by enhancing plant growth, controlling disease, and providing critical mineral nutrients, is a potential solution. The microorganisms found in bioinoculants are often bacteria or fungi that reside within either external or internal plant microbiomes. However, before they can be used routinely in agriculture, these microbes must be confirmed as nonpathogenic strains that promote plant growth and survival. In this article, besides describing approaches for discovering plant-growth-promoting bacteria in various environments, including phytomicrobiomes and soils, we also discuss methods to evaluate their safety for the environment and for human health.
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DOI: 10.1139/cjm-2018-0315
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