ABSTRACT
Current soil management practices are highly dependent on chemical fertilizers, which threaten human health, the environment, and crop yield. Eco-friendly strategies have influenced various applications of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), endo-mycorrhizal fungi, cyanobacteria, and numerous other beneficial microorganisms, which have enhanced plant growth yield by enhancing nutrient uptake and plant tolerance to abiotic stress. Thus, using beneficial microorganisms as bio-fertilizers has become vital in agriculture due to their potential to improve food safety and agricultural production sustainability. Microbial bio-fertilizers may be a viable solution for maintaining productivity while implementing eco-friendlier and integrative nutrient management techniques. They have been developed to use naturally occurring nutrient transport mechanisms, which boost soil health and crop productivity. Plant nutrients are critical for crop productivity and the production of nutritious food for the world’s ever-growing population. The application of bio-fertilizers promotes plant water and nutrients uptake, growth, and tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. These possible biological fertilizers can perform an imperative and significant part in soil production on a sustainable basis with cost-effective inputs for agriculture production. This chapter focuses on how bio-fertilizers control crop functional attributes such as growth and yield of plants, nutrient characteristics, and plant defensive performance and protection, with a particular emphasis on their function to activate numerous growth- and defense-related genes in the signalling network of cellular pathways, causing cellular responses and thus crop improvement. Several biotic and abiotic factors affect crop production globally. The published information will help us understand the physiological basis of bio-fertilizers for sustainable farming in reducing issues related to using chemical fertilizers.
