Bacillus subtilis: A plant-growth promoting rhizobacterium that also impacts biotic stress

By A. Hashem, B. Tabassum, Elsayed Fathi Abd_Allah. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences, 2019

765 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plants encounter many biotic agents, such as viruses, bacteria, nematodes, weeds, and arachnids. These entities induce biotic stress in their hosts by disrupting normal metabolism, and as a result, limit plant growth and/or are the cause of plant mortality. Some biotic agents, however, interact symbiotically or synergistically with their host plants. Some microbes can be beneficial to plants and perform the same role as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, acting as a biofertilizer and/or biopesticide. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) can significantly enhance plant growth and represent a mutually helpful plant-microbe interaction. Bacillus species are a major type of rhizobacteria that can form spores that can survive in the soil for long period of time under harsh environmental conditions. Plant growth is enhanced by PGPR through the induction of systemic resistance, antibiosis, and competitive omission. Thus, the application of microbes can be used to induce systemic resistance in plants against biotic agents and enhance environmental stress tolerance. Bacillus subtilis exhibits both a direct and indirect biocontrol mechanism to suppress disease caused by pathogens. The direct mechanism includes the synthesis of many secondary metabolites, hormones, cell-wall-degrading enzymes, and antioxidants that assist the plant in its defense against pathogen attack. The indirect mechanism includes the stimulation of plant growth and the induction of acquired systemic resistance. Bacillus subtilis can also solubilize soil P, enhance nitrogen fixation, and produce siderophores that promote its growth and suppresses the growth of pathogens. Bacillus subtilis enhances stress tolerance in their plant hosts by inducing the expression of stress-response genes, phytohormones, and stress-related metabolites. The present review discusses the activity of B. subtilis in the rhizosphere, its role as a root colonizer, its biocontrol potential, the associated mechanisms of biocontrol and the ability of B. subtilis to increase crop productivity under conditions of biotic and abiotic stress.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/27ab9585beba02d0d27addcbeac0a8d841e27efe

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In Molecular Biology

1. M. Rafique
2. M. Rizwan
3. Shafaqat Ali
4. T. Sultan
5. H. J. Chaudhary

In Plant Science

1. M. Rizwan
2. Shafaqat Ali
3. Xiaopeng Sun
4. Mingqiu Dai
5. Hui Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• Heavy metal remediation and resistance mechanism of Aeromonas, Bacillus, and Pseudomonas: A review (2020, background): “Furthermore, B. subtilis plays an important role in improving tolerance to biotic stresses through its involvement in the expression of certain genes and hormones, such as 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase (Hashem et al., 2019).”
• Improving crop drought resistance with plant growth regulators and rhizobacteria: Mechanisms, applications, and perspectives (2021, background): “Some VOCs produced by PGPRs can regulate plant growth without inoculation or physical contact with plants (Cappellari et al., 2017; Rojas-Solı́s et al., 2018; Hashem et al., 2019), and this is another effective way for PGPRs to improve plant drought resistance.”