Abstract
Global climate change accelerates the concurrence of a variety of abiotic (e.g., drought, salinity, heavy metals, and extreme temperatures) and biotic stresses (e.g., phytopathogens), thus considerably affecting agricultural productivity and bioremediation efficiency, even forest ecosystems. In this scenario, plant growth promoting microorganisms (PGPM) are receiving increasing attention of agronomists and environmentalists as candidates to develop an effective, eco-friendly, and sustainable alternative to conventional agricultural (e.g., chemical fertilizers and pesticide) and remediation (e.g., chelators-enhanced phytoremediation) methods employed to deal with these climate change-induced stresses (Ma et al., 2011, 2016, Ma et al.).
Research on PGPM [e.g. (plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB), rhizobia, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)] have shown great potential in the management of various agricultural and environmental problems, however, to date, a collective database on the role of PGPM in alleviating various climatic stresses in plants is not available. Therefore, this research topic was launched to advance the knowledge of the mechanisms underlying plant-microbe interactions, review recent progress and address some of the challenges, thus providing the opportunities to translate basic knowledge into sustainable applications.