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Lead Centre: ICAR-National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (NBAIM), MAU
Background and Rationale
Sustainable agriculture is a worldwide key word for agriculture in which microbial communities associated with the plants and within the soils have a major decisive and identified role to play. Microbes are the most live, vital and important communities to affect plant and soil health and crop wellbeing along with the sustenance of the ecological niches. Microorganisms are important to take into account for sustainable agriculture because they really define the quality and productivity of the soils in a given agro-ecosystem. Microbial diversity, microbial load, presence of indicator microorganisms and their useful functions are definitive indexes to study soil and plant health. Environmental stresses, biotic pressures and agricultural interventions in different agro-ecological zones is posing a dramatic shift in microbial diversity and the structural change of microbial communities that further leads to change the functional activities. In the rhizosphere, microbial communities are capable to alleviate abiotic (salinity or drought) or biotic stresses in plants by different mechanisms thereby, creating a greater opportunities to study the real-time interconnections within inter- and intra-species cross-talk and its impact on biodiversity.

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Objectives
  1. Preparation of a blue-print of plant associated microbial biodiversity of different crops, crop-combinations in different agroecological regions/zones.
  2. Development of the base line information on zone specific microbial biodiversity.
  3. Functional characterization of trait-specific microbial communities in different cropping patterns.
  4. Screening and evaluation of microbial isolates for potential applications in agriculture.
  5. Conservation and documentation of microbial bioresoureces for future needs.
Targets/Activities
  1. Survey and sampling from different agro-ecological zone.
  2. Structural blue-print of microbial communities.
  3. Development of base line information on zone specific microbial biodiversity.
  4. Assigning functional attributes to microbial species/communities.
  5. Conservation, documentation and utilization of microbial bioresoureces for future agriculture.
  6. Screening of selected isolates for their potential application in agriculture.
  7. Data analysis.

Copyright (C) 2016 All Rights Resereved, ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources,
Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Ministry of Agriculture (Govt. of India), Pusa Campus, New Delhi-110012, INDIA