Salinity stress is one of the major abiotic stresses threatening sustainable crop production worldwide. The extent of salinity affected area is expected to cover about 50% of total agricultural land by 2050. Salinity stress produces various detrimental effects on plants’ physiological, biochemical, and molecular features and reduces productivity. The poor plant growth under salinity stress is due to reduced nutrient mobilization, hormonal imbalance, and formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), ionic toxicity, and osmotic stress. Additionally, salinity also modulates physicochemical properties and reduces the microbial diversity of soil and thus decreases soil health. On the other hand, the demand for crop production is expected to increase in coming decades owing to the increasing global population. Conventional agricultural practices and improved salt-tolerant crop varieties will not be sufficient to achieve the yields desired in the near future. Plants harbor diverse microbes in their rhizosphere, and these have the potential to cope with the salinity stress. These salinity-tolerant plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) assist the plants in withstanding saline conditions. These plant-associated microbes produce different compounds such as 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), antioxidants, extracellular polymeric substance (EPS), and volatile organic compounds (VOC). Additionally, the naturally associated microbiome of plants has the potential to protect the host through stress avoidance, tolerance, and resistance strategies. Recent developments in microbiome research have shown ways in which novel microbe-assisted technologies can enhance plant salt tolerance and enable higher crop production under saline conditions. This focused review article presents the global scenario of salinity stress and discusses research highlights regarding PGPB and the microbiome as a biological tool for mitigation of salinity stress in plants.

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Composite materials have emerged as an effective substitute for conventional materials in various fields of engineering and structural science. For replacement of regular metals, composites, especially fiber‐reinforced polymer composites, have proved to be a suitable alternative. One of the important tests that conventional and composite materials have to undergo is fatigue test. It refers to the testing of materials for their cyclic behavior. In fatigue testing, depending on the choice of the researchers, materials are loaded till reaching their failure or till reaching a fraction of the total stiffness loss. Composite materials are different from metals and they show a distinct behavior under fatigue loading. In metals, failure occurs from the commencement of a single crack and then its propagation. In composite materials, conversely, it is a complex process as these materials possess crack‐arresting properties. This review paper highlights various aspects of the cyclic or fatigue behavior in composite materials. Factors triggering such behavior in composite materials include reinforcing substance, matrix material, fiber orientation or stacking sequence, fiber content, testing environment and so on, together with the damage development process at the microscopic level. Loading condition parameters pertain to stress ratio, mean stress, loading condition, multiaxial stress, and testing frequency. This article also includes the effect of carbon nanotubes on the fatigue life of the polymer composites. POLYM. COMPOS., 39:1785–1808, 2018. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers

Sustainable agronomic practices are tried all over the world to promote safe and ecofriendly crop production. Therefore, in the present study, the effect of seed endophytic bacteria and its consortium on soil biochemical property and yield of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under field and pot conditions are investigated. Both the experimental results proved a significant increase in total soil organic carbon (OC), electric conductivity (EC), organic matter (OM), and soil nutrients like available N, P, and K content and important soil enzymes like dehydrogenase (DHA), beta glucosidase, alkaline phosphate, urease, and microbial population in soil was observed under the Enterobacter hormaechei BHUJPCS-15 (T 1 ), Enterobacter cloacae BHUJPCS-21 (T 2 ), and combined T 3 (consortium of T 1 and T 2 ) treatments. Similarly, a significant increase in the grain yield (27-45% and 57-73%) in microbial treatment was found in pot and field experiments, respectively, than in control. In addition, whereas the higher plant biomass (14-38% and 42-78%) was recorded in treated plant over the control plant. Similarly, the plant photosynthetic pigments (Chl a, b, total Chl) were increased in microbial treated plant than the control untreated chickpea plant. Consortium of endophytes were recorded effective result for enhancing plant growth attributes, productivity, and soil health. The consortium can be further used as biofertilizers for sustainable chickpea production. Our present study highlights the significance of sustainable agronomic practices for improving the soil quality and agricultural yield while reducing adverse impacts of chemicals by the use of seed endophytic microbes and its consortium.chickpea, microbial consortium, plant growth promoting microbes (PGPM), seed endophytes, soil health and fertility | INTRODUCTIONRecently, the main problem around the world agriculture is the loss of soil quality and fertility. Due to loss of organic matter (OM) and decomposition of different chemicals into the agricultural soil, productivity of agricultural crops reduces. Currently, other major problems are random industrialization, urbanization, and cutting of natural forest. In addition, the poor agro-waste management practices increase the greenhouse gas emissions, random chemical use leads to loss of soil quality and fertility along with the loss of soil biodiversity (Abhilash et al., 2016). Furthermore, the overgrowth of population around the world requires more quality food in limited fertile soils.

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