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Microbes under Stress Conditions
Microbes provide excellent models
for understanding the stress tolerance, adaptation and
response mechanisms that can be subsequently engineered
into crop plants to cope with climate change induced
stresses. The role of microbes in management of biotic
and abiotic stresses is gaining importance.
The
different stress factors have a significant influence on
the performance of microorganisms. Few extremophiles
such as in thermophiles
and halophiles, optimum metabolic process like enzymatic activities and
membrane stability occur at high
temperature or salinity respectively, whereas other microorganisms
develop different adaptation mechanisms to combat the stress.
Systematic
identification of
microbial strains providing cross-protection
against multiple stressors is a highly valuable
information for agricultural production in changing
environmental conditions.
Prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes
thrive successfully in stressful environments such as
high osmolarity, acidic or alkali, solar heat and UV
radiation, nutrient starvation, oxidative stress and
several others. Microorganisms can play a significant
role in this respect, if we
can exploit their unique
properties of tolerance to extremities, their ubiquity,
genetic diversity, their interaction with crop plants and develop
methods for their successful deployment in
agriculture production.
For microbial cross-protection to
become an effective tool, a better understanding of the
underlying morphological, physiological and molecular
mechanisms of microbial stress tolerance and the
phenomenon of adaptation during evolutionary process is critical.
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