Plant-Microbe Dynamics

Book excerpt: Plants and microbes are co-evolved and interact with each other in nature. Understanding the complex nature of the plant-microbe interface can pave the way for novel strategies to improve plant productivity in an eco-friendly manner. The microbes associated with plants, often called plant microbiota, are an integral part of plant life. The significance of the plant microbiome is a reliable approach towards sustainability in order to meet the future food crises and rejuvenate soil health. Profiling of the plant-associated microbiome (genome assemblies of all microbes) is an emerging concept to understand the plant-microbe interactions. Microbiota extends the plant capacity to acclimatize fluctuating environmental conditions through several mechanisms. Thus, unravelling the mystery of plant-microbe dynamics through latest technologies to better understand the role of metabolites and signal pathway mechanisms. This book shares the latest insight on omics technologies to unravel plant-microbe dynamic interactions and other novel phytotechnologies for cleaning contaminated soils. Besides, it also provides brief insight on the recently discovered clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9-a genome editing tool to explore plant-microbe interactions and how this genome editing tool helps to improve the ability of microbes/plants to combat abiotic/biotic stresses.