Organic amendments, PGPR and drought stress

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Under drought stress, reduced growth and development of crops have been observed in many crops. For the sustainable management of drought stress, it is important to develop certain strategies that are efficient and low- cost to increase crop productivity. These resource management strategies include the integrated use of PGPR and organic amendments (compost, and BC). Figure 5 gives an overview of the impacts of drought stress on plants and its amelioration through economical, environment- friendly, and sustainable ways. These strategies help reduce environmental pollution due to the usage of various organic wastes for BC and com-post preparation and are environment- friendly. Numerous studies have confirmed their efficacy in improving the growth and yield of crops under drought stress. Algal BC is comparatively low in car-bon content, surface area and cation exchange capacity, but high in pH, ash, nitrogen, and extractable inorganic nutrients including P, K, Ca and Mg. Therefore, algal BC has properties that provide direct nutrient benefits to soils and crop productivity under drought stress. In the case of integrated use of PGPR, compost and BC, very few studies have been conducted under normal as well as under abiotic stress conditions such as drought stress. In the future, more rigorous studies are required to evaluate their additive effect during drought stress under field conditions. Moreover, in-sights into the mechanisms behind the interaction of PGPR and plants under drought stress need further investigation. For this elucidation, employing various state- of- the- art molecular approaches would help find out the mechanisms behind their synergistic effect.

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