Beneficial Microbes for Agriculture: From Discovery to Applications

Microbiome research was established at the beginning of the twenty-first century and nowadays provides an interdisciplinary platform for many fields including agriculture, food science, biotechnology, and plant pathology. In the past, the general idea for plant protection was to identify, isolate, and apply specific, beneficial microbes for disease protection. Plants are naturally colonized by a high variety of microorganisms and are able to form complex and dynamic interactions with their associated microbes. It has been reported in recent years that domestication and intensive agriculture have resulted in loss of biodiversity in general and in microbial diversity in particular. Microorganisms that are utilized as individual or multistrain inoculants can be applied to plants along the food supply chain, including pre- and post-harvest. During the last decades large inputs of chemical products have temporarily increased crop yields; however, they also have had devastating effects on global soil biodiversity leading to long-term soil health deficiencies.