Microbial Consortium: A Boon for a Sustainable Agriculture

Rhizosphere is a highly activated region in the soil where microbial number and diversity is huge. These belowground microbes are interacted with each other as well as with the plant roots and some of these interactions are beneficial for plant growth. The plant signalling molecules (like root exudates) produced by plants shapes the microbial diversity in the rhizospheric region. Some of the rhizosphere microbes are useful for the plant development and are known as plant growth promoting rhizomicrobes (PGPR). These PGPR exerted various plant growth promoting effects by various mechanisms like phosphate solubilisation, nitrogen fixation, plant growth hormones production, secretion of antimicrobial compounds etc. These PGPR are excellent substitute for chemical inputs used for increasing crop production as chemical inputs disrupt the soil biological as well as chemical property. The PGPR formulation used as biofertilizer and are generally use single microbial strain. But the application of single microbial strain biofertilizer in soil showed inconsistency in the results. Research studies have showed that application of biofertilizer containing two or more microbial strains also known as co-inoculation or consortium is more beneficial as compared to single microbial strain application. Therefore, in the present chapter the importance of biofertilizer containing microbial consortium for the application in sustainable agriculture is discussed.