Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPNs) rank among the most devastating plant pathogens, inflicting substantial economic losses in agriculture. While synthetic chemical nematicides are often employed as an effective control measure, their detrimental effects on non-target organisms and ecosystems underscore the urgent need for environmentally sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives. Plant roots naturally produce a wide array of metabolites with defensive properties, highlighting the importance of understanding root-mediated interactions between plants and nematodes as a foundation for managing these harmful pests. This book chapter delves into the potential of botanical solutions for combating PPNs. Botanical amendments, including plant metabolites and extracts, have emerged as valuable tools, serving dual roles as organic fertilizers and nematicidal agents. These amendments suppress nematode growth and development by releasing nematicidal compounds, exhibiting antagonistic effects, and enhancing plant resistance by modulating plant physiology. Furthermore, breeding programs aimed at developing resistant crop varieties through the incorporation of resistance genes present a promising avenue for nematode management. The chapter emphasizes the integration of organic agricultural practices to foster sustainable ecosystem management, enhance plant productivity, and utilize cost-effective, eco-friendly botanicals for the efficient control of phytonematodes.

Metabolomics is the study of profiles of cell metabolites and its understanding is essential to comprehend most cellular and molecular systems underlying various plant functions, omics, and bioinformatics. In order to achieve much deeper insights, integrated approaches that combine more advanced bioinformatic tools with transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other data handling, processing, analysis, and integration techniques along with strong computational tools are indispensable. This approach is essential for conducting mechanistic research on plant metabolites. Bioinformatics databases and software applications needed for plant research are available for this. Plant science can be improved by combining powerful bioinformatics tools with omics techniques. An integrated approach typically completes a better research task, such as mechanistic studies on plant metabolism and plant authentication. This chapter will provide an objective description of some integrated metabolomic data analysis and bioinformatic tools for constructive metabolomics.

Heavy metal toxicity in the ecosystems is hazardous for living beings as it enters into the food chains through water and soil. The plants absorb the excessive toxic metal ions from the environment resulting in the disruption of various metabolic and physiological pathways in plants. The removal and stabilization of toxic metals from a plant’s surroundings take place by Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR), Endophytic Bacteria, and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF). AMF is used as a biological indicator for toxic metal pollution. Mycorrhizae use various mechanisms (avoidance and tolerance) for metal detoxification and help in maintaining the nutrition, growth, ecological processes and functioning, nutrient cycles, and diversity of plants. They have vesicles that act as vacuoles and store an excessive amount of toxic metal ions in them. About 80% of plant families showed a symbiotic connection with Mycorrhizal fungi. AMF produces 20% C (Carbon) from the plant and, in return, benefits the plant with more water uptake and other essential nutrients from the soil via their hyphal networks. This chapter presents the importance of Mycorrhizae-assisting phytoremediation by increasing the activities of defense enzymes, expanding the area of absorption, stimulating the expression of genes, and enhancing the chelation of toxic metal ions. This document also focuses on the toxic metal uptake, their amassing, and the mechanism associated with AMF-assisted phytoremediation of metalliferous soil.

Heavy metals can harm the bodies of all living organisms in terrible ways. This frightening situation will grow into a severe crisis when polluted living beings containing harmful heavy metals enter the human food chain. Probiotics have a great potential to minimize such kind of heavy metal poisoning in living beings. Probiotics have tremendous potential to effectively bioremediate various toxic heavy metals or metalloids (Cadmium (Cd), Mercury (Hg), Lead (Pb), Arsenic (As), etc.) from a variety of polluted environments. Endogenous presence of probiotics or exogenous application of probiotics can be proven to lessen the toxicity of these heavy metals inside living beings’ bodies. Due to this reason, probiotics are also popularly known as biological detoxification tools. This book chapter provides comprehensive details related to probiotic strains, their mechanism of action, and their role in various heavy metal detoxification processes. This chapter also sheds light on recent progress in generating genetically engineered probiotics for treating HM toxicity.

Bradyrhizobium is a genus with diverse species in the α-proteobacteria group, known for its ability to form symbiotic and endophytic relationships with both leguminous and non-leguminous plants. Despite its global prevalence, the biodiversity of Bradyrhizobium is underreported, particularly in tropical regions. The genus encompasses multiple species with varying symbiotic abilities and genetic diversity is influenced by environmental factors and soil management practices. They are prevalent in dry, acidic soils, particularly in Australia and South America. These nitrogen fixing bacteria thrive in diverse and challenging soil environments, exhibiting resilience through metabolic diversity, stress tolerance and the ability to utilize various carbon sources. Nitrogen fixation by rhizobium is a highly energy-demanding process that converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into ammonia (NH3) under microaerobic conditions. The efficiency of symbiotic nitrogen fixation is influenced by environmental stress, soil condition and the genetic diversity of the rhizobial community. This review focuses on the role of Bradyrhizobium in alleviating abiotic stress and amelioration of biotic stress in plants. It plays a crucial role in mitigating abiotic stress in plants, such as salinity, drought and extreme temperatures. Through symbiotic relationships, these bacteria help plants to mobilize nutrients, produce phytohormones and enhance stress tolerance by antioxidative mechanisms, ultimately contributing to improved agricultural productivity. This review highlights the importance of Bradyrhizobium in sustainable agriculture practices which emphasizes its potential to reduce dependency on chemical fertilizers and improve plant resilience to environmental stresses. This review focuses on the progress established in knowing its biodiversity till date and sets the stage for further exploration of the specific mechanisms through which Bradyrhizobium mitigates stress in plants.

Various abiotic and biotic stressors, including water extremes, temperature fluctuations, salinity, and heavy metals, pathogens and diseases significantly reduce global crop yields. Rapid plant responses are essential for adapting and minimizing metabolic losses. In this context, plant transporters (PTs) are essential for modulating stress responses by enabling the passage of diverse molecules and ions through the plasma membrane. Plant transporters play a pivotal role in regulating water and facilitating nutrient uptake, maintaining cellular equilibrium including osmotic regulation, detoxification, biofortification and orchestrating source-to-sink dynamics across different environmental stages in plants. In this review, we delved into recent discoveries concerning diverse transporter families such as ABC, MATE, NRAMP, SWEET, Symporters, STP, KUP, COPT/Ctr, NPF, NRT, PHT, YSL, ZIP and STP. Understanding the functions of these transporters is paramount for elucidating stress tolerance mechanisms and enhancing crop resilience through breeding and gene editing. These specialized plant membrane transporters play a crucial role in securing sustainable economic yields and maintaining high-quality produce, particularly in challenging growth conditions. We explored their contributions to plant robust growth via their crucial role in NPK and secondary metabolite transport. Through an integrated analysis of transporter dynamics during stress, we unveiled the nexus between nutrient management and stress resilience. We also clustered promising techniques that has been achieved to identify PTs such as function-driven screens, phenotype-driven screens and in silico-based approaches and provide a comprehensive overview of these transporters, offering valuable insights for the research community. This review also discusses future prospects for the use of bioinformatic computational tools in constructing signaling networks to improve our understanding of the behavior of transporters under abiotic and biotic stress. In this review, we highlight examples with case studies that illustrated how new technology and computational tools has been utilized in advanced identification and characterization of PTs functions. By strategically manipulating these transporters, we can pave the way for the development of "Plants for the Future."

Plant growth and development are negatively impacted by root-knot nematodes (RKNs), which in turn affects plant production. Chemical nematicides are one of the effective strategies for managing RKNs. But, high concentration of these chemicals is toxic to plants, environment and humans. Therefore, an in-vivo study was conducted to unravel the synergistic interplay sodium nitroprusside (SNP: nitric oxide donor) and, Serratia marcescens in M. incognita-stressed tomato plants. Results revealed that treatment with SNP and bacterial culture cells reduced gall formation and improved morphology. It also reduced nematode-induced oxidative stress in M. incognita-infested tomato plants as compared to untreated plants. Increased photosynthetic parameters including photosynthetic pigments and gas-exchange parameters was also observed in treated plants. Additionally, treated plants exhibited increased antioxidant defense system in terms of upregulated activities of enzymatic antioxidants (Ascorbate peroxidase, guaiacol peroxidase, polyphenol oxidase, catalase, glutathione-S-transferase and superoxide dismutase). Content of non-enzymatic antioxidants (Glutathione, ascorbic acid and tocopherol) was also enhanced in treated plants as compared to untreated nematode-infected plants. Further, treatment with SNP and S. marcescens increased secondary metabolites (total phenol, flavonoid and anthocyanin) and proline content. Reduction in nematode-induced nuclear and membrane damage was also observed in SNP and bacterial culture cells treated tomato plants. The integrative application of SNP and S. marcescens exhibited synergism and overpowered their individual application in reducing the negative effects of nematode stress. The findings of the current investigation suggest the integrative use of SNP and bacteria is more beneficial in alleviating nematode stress in plants.

To meet the demand of the increasing human population, pesticidal applications become an unavoidable part of agricultural practices. Pesticides contribute to the agricultural sector by increasing food production and controlling crop-damaging pests. In contrast, these pesticides contaminate the soil, air, and water ecosystem and cause toxic effects on targeted and nontargeted organisms. When these pesticides are put on the ground, they move by air, water, or soil outside of where they were meant to be used. These pesticide residues can cause long-term harmful impacts on a variety of organisms and human health mainly by entering the food chain and disturbing ecosystem stability. This chapter summarizes the current research on pesticide and pesticide residue dynamics in different tropical levels (primary, secondary, and tertiary), its impact on different ecosystems (soil, water, and air), the food chain, and food web.

Primary supplies of several economically essential metals/metalloids are diminishing, resulting in high supply risks and rising costs of these resources. A way to recover these metals/metalloids is to recycle and use secondary sources made by humans like agro-industrial green/mining wastes or contaminated sites. Such metals/metalloids may be recovered from these secondary sources via phytomining technology. Phytomining is one of the potentially creative and cheap sustainable techniques for choosy recovery of important metal/metalloids from various inferior sources. Phytomining intends to recover these metals from wastes incineration slags by cultivating hyperaccumulating plants on these substrates. It is a type of phytoextraction in which the buildup of valuable metals/metalloids in the hyperaccumulator plants is equivalent to those of traditional metal ores. Thus, the technique has sufficient worth to support cultivation of hyperaccumulator plants in order to yield a marketable bio-ore. Additionally, the implementation of agronomic methods for metal extraction through farming that enhance economic return is a necessary step for development and success of phytomining technique. Such kind of agro-farming for metal is also known as agromining, a subset of phytomining. In the recent past, significant progress has made in understanding how phytomining, an eco-friendly technique based on plants, could be used in the agro-based or mining sector to build a positive connection between the industrial sector and the societal communities. This chapter is focused on phytomining and its applications in wastes produced from agro/mining industries as well as contaminant sites that contain metals/metalloids with a marketable value.

Pesticides are chemicals that are required to be implemented in agricultural setups in order to maintain crop production and eliminate the insect pests which are adversely impacting crop yields. These chemical toxicants are generally classified as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, bactericides, etc. The uncontrolled and unchecked applications of these toxicants are drastically impacting the global environment as well as the associated ecosystems. Their entry into the soil and water ecosystems will lead to their residual entities getting incorporated inside the plant tissues and leads to their entry into the human through food chains. In plants, these pesticides get their entry through absorption via roots, through leaf surfaces, and further gets accumulated in the plant tissues, whereas plants have developed certain mechanisms to cope with these toxic chemicals through enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxidants. Whereas humans get exposed mainly through toxic food chains as well as through contaminated water resources which further gets accumulated inside the tissues and leads to adverse impact on the kidneys, brain, lungs, liver, gastrointestinal, and skin, and severely leads to mutations, certain diseases as well act cancerous in multiple cases. Pesticides are also prevalent to cause toxicity in honeybees which further compromises the pollination process, also they are known to impair the functions of aquatic animals, and birds and invariably affect the soil microbial populations which are potential growth regulators to plants in the soils. In this chapter, a confined mechanism of entry of pesticides into different organism have been elaborated. Also, a precise mechanism for their detoxification in plants has been provided.

The ecosystem of the earth is fascinating and intricate. The interactions that occur in the soil affect its characteristics as a substrate for development and activity of soil microorganisms and plants. The majority of terrestrial plants have a symbiotic, mutually beneficial interaction with the soil fungi known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These microorganisms expand the root's absorption region, which improves the plant's ability to absorb nutrients. The symbiont gets plant carbohydrates in return for accomplishing its life cycle. Additionally, AMF aids in the adaptation of plants to biotic and abiotic challenges including salt, drought, extremely high or low temperatures, heavy metals, diseases and infections. AMF are constantly interacting with ample variety of microbes, including endo-bacteria, rhizobacteria that encourage plant growth and mycorrhiza helper bacteria, plant parasitic nematodes, fungi and other microbes inhabiting the rhizosphere and hyphosphere. Their interactions may be of utmost significance and might affect agriculture. The present chapter summarizes the main microbial community groups and their interaction with AMF in the rhizosphere and hyphosphere along with the advantageous effects of AMF on plants.