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Handbook for Azospirillum pp 447–467Cite as

Azospirillum spp. and Related PGPRs Inocula Use in Intensive Agriculture

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Abstract

From the beginning of plant domestication, extensive farming has been the main strategy adopted by agriculture to produce large amounts of food. However, plant production in a continuously deteriorating environment and an exponentially growing human population are important factors that challenge agriculture nowadays. Moreover, agricultural lands are currently expanded to marginal, arid, or semiarid regions where crops are exposed to abiotic stresses as drought and salinity, this last negative factor aggravated by different anthropogenic actions. In addition, contemporary society requires from agriculture to provide food products with high market and nutritional qualities as fruits and vegetables, which should also be free of agrochemicals. In consequence, it is imperative to develop friendly, non-contaminant, sustainable, and energy-saving plant production strategies. In this regard, vegetable production by intensive farming in controlled environments is continuously expanding. On the other hand, recent reports show that plant inoculation with plant-growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) could improve vegetable quality and yield under abiotic stresses, and to reduce the pressure that current agriculture exerts on the environment. Within this context, our main purpose was to describe a number of techniques aimed to study the plausible beneficial effects of Azospirillum and related PGPR inoculation on vegetable growth and nutritional quality, with emphasis on the promotion of antioxidant activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias Balcarce, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Unidad Integrada Balcarce (FCA UNMdP-EEA INTA) Ruta 226 km 73.5, Balcarce, Buenos Aires, 7620, Argentina

    Elda Mabel Casanovas, Gabriela Fasciglione & Carlos Alberto Barassi

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  1. Elda Mabel Casanovas
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  2. Gabriela Fasciglione
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  3. Carlos Alberto Barassi
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Correspondence to Elda Mabel Casanovas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Fisiología Vegetal y de la Interacción Planta-Microorganismo, Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto, Rio Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina

    Fabricio Dario Cassán

  2. Faculty of Agricultue Food and Environme, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Central, Israel

    Yaacov Okon

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Balcarce, Argentina

    Cecilia M. Creus

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Casanovas, E.M., Fasciglione, G., Barassi, C.A. (2015). Azospirillum spp. and Related PGPRs Inocula Use in Intensive Agriculture. In: Cassán, F., Okon, Y., Creus, C. (eds) Handbook for Azospirillum. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06542-7_25

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