Book Review: Principles of Plant-Microbe Interactions: Microbes for Sustainable Agriculture

The significance of plant-microbe interactions in sustainable agriculture is enormous. These interactions may be negative such as the host-pathogen interactions leading to the disease development in plants or positive likes the interaction of the plants with the beneficial soil microbiota for stimulating the plant growth, conferring biotic, and abiotic stress tolerance in plants and helping the plants for the revitalization of contaminated and degraded soils (Abhilash et al., 2012). Apart from that, the beneficial microorganisms influence the resource allocation between root and shoot, biodiversity and also mediate the above-ground below ground interactions with herbivores and other natural enemies of the plants. Moreover, such dialogues between plant and microbes can modify the chemical, physical, and biochemical properties of the soil. The root exudate secreted by the plant allocates carbon and nutrients to the soil in the form of low molecular weight sugars, amino acids, and organic acids, polymerized sugars (e.g., mucilage), root border cells and dead root cap cells. Plant secretes phytosiderophores that help in sequestration of metallic micronutrients from the soil. Root exudates also contains secondary metabolites which help in the communication of plant and microbes. However, these interactions are intriguingly complex and dynamic and quite difficult to decipher as they takes places at different interfaces such as rhizosphere, phyllosphere, and endosphere. Therefore, a deep understanding of the interwoven processes taking place at the above interfaces is essential for disentangling the contribution of the each and every player for the ecosystem wellbeing. Thus, it is imperative to understand the key processes of the plant-microbe interactions in relation to assessing the contribution of the plant associated microorganisms to sustainable agriculture, ecosystem restoration, biomass and bioenergy production and mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change (Saleem and Moe, 2014). In this context, the book " Principles of Plant-Microbe Interactions: Microbes for Sustainable Agriculture, " edited by Ben Lugtenberg (2015) is a topical and timely contribution on plant-microbe interactions and offers a great hope for harnessing such beneficial interactions for making agriculture as a sustainable enterprise. Though literature provides ample information on plant-microbe interactions, the current book is first of its kind to discuss not only the interactions of microbes with plants but also the interactions of other important but often ignored players such as nematodes, insects, and pests. The book also discusses various ecological, economic and social aspects related to the plant-microbe based packages right from exploiting the symbiotic relationship to the …