Marine and Salt-Tolerant Microorganisms as Promising Plant Growth Promoting Bioinoculants for Plant Stress Mitigation and Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

TILIZING every square inch of arable land for crop production is essential for ensuring the food and nutritional security of the world's growing population, given the limited amount of arable land and water resources available. Microorganisms possess many bioactive metabolites, but not all microorganisms exhibit this characteristic. Marine microorganisms live in a very complicated habitat and are exposed to extreme conditions; to adapt, they manage to possess, among others, a diverse array of unique secondary metabolites, including alkaloids, terpenoids, polyketides, and quinones. These metabolites exhibit anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and anti-tumor properties. Moreover, many marine bacteria exhibit metal tolerance and contribute significantly to the remediation of soil polluted with heavy metals. Biotechnologies can optimize crop output by taking advantage of these bacteria and soil-plant dynamics, which could help establish a new sustainable agriculture framework. In this situation, much research has focused on the complex relationships between plants and soildwelling symbiotic microbes. These bacteria play a pivotal role in enhancing the ecological prosperity of plants inside their indigenous environments. This could lead to improved survival and performance of plants in field conditions. Plant growth-promoting microorganisms (PGPMs) play a crucial role in augmenting the synthesis of bioactive secondary metabolites in plants and have the ability to modulate the plant metabolome under diverse environmental stress conditions. Therefore, this review aims to present the influence of microbes, especially marine-derived microbes, on promoting plant growth and altering its metabolome in response to different environmental stressors.