Summary
This narrative review examines how beneficial soil microorganisms confer drought tolerance in plants through osmotic adjustment, root system enhancement, and stress-response modulation. The authors assess emerging agricultural practices—including bioaugmentation, seed coating, and microbial consortia—as validated approaches for enhancing drought resilience, whilst identifying critical barriers to adoption such as environmental variability, scalability challenges, and regulatory constraints that warrant further investigation.
UK applicability
UK agriculture faces increasing drought stress due to climate change, particularly in southern and eastern regions; findings on microbial interventions for drought resilience are applicable to both arable and horticultural sectors. However, the review emphasises that environmental variability affects microbial performance, suggesting that strain selection and adaptation for temperate and maritime UK conditions would be necessary before widespread implementation.
Key measures
Mechanisms of drought stress mitigation (osmotic adjustment, root architecture enhancement, phytohormone modulation, antioxidant induction, stress-responsive gene expression); adoption and effectiveness of microbial interventions across farming systems; barriers to commercialisation and scalability
Outcomes reported
The review synthesised evidence on how plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, mycorrhizal fungi, endophytes, actinomycetes, and cyanobacteria enhance drought tolerance through multiple physiological mechanisms. It evaluated ecological and agricultural innovations including soil microbiome engineering, bioaugmentation, seed coating, soil amendments, and microbial consortia as scalable strategies for improving drought resilience across diverse farming systems.
Topic tags
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