ABSTRACT
Healthy plants are essential to the survival of humans and animals on earth. Several stress conditions limit crop production worldwide, and among these is biotic stress. This chapter discusses the mitigation of biotic stress due to diseases, insect pests, and weeds in soybean production. Biotic stress agents such as pathogens, parasitic weeds, and harmful insects cause severe damages and losses to agricultural products. Conventional agriculture employed to alleviate the menace of biotic agents of crops promotes heavy reliance on the use of agrochemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides to control biotic stress agents of plants. The chapter provides evidence that beneficial microorganisms have the potential to protect or control soybean diseases, weeds, and insect pests for sustainable food production and hence, food security. Mitigating biotic stresses of soybean via microbial inoculant technology will reduce overall production costs and minimize negative environmental and human exposure effects associated with a chemical control method.
