Plant-specific microbiome for environmental stress management: Issues and challenges

Abstract Plants are always subjected to face environmental stress factors such as biotic and abiotic stress from seed sowing to plant harvesting. These factors affect plants and cause severe losses in agriculture production around the world. Moreover, vigorous use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides in shrinking farmland presents additional risk, which causes detrimental effects on the environment and ultimately on human health. To overcome these problems, researchers are involved to use plant-specific microbiome, which can provide tolerance to the plants under both biotic and abiotic stress conditions and can solve the problem of lower agriculture production. In fact, application of plant-specific microbiome as an inoculant in agriculture fields presents alternative strategies, which will enhance future agriculture production around the world. On the other hand the demand of agriculture production for food and nutrient security with a growing global population is also causing pressure of how the use of microbiome can enhance crop yield and reduce losses due to environmental stresses. In this chapter, we highlight the plant-specific microbiome that may provide effective and sustainable increase crop production under both biotic and abiotic stress conditions and will ultimately lead to food and nutrient security around the world.