Plant Growth-promoting Microorganisms Isolated from Plants as Potential Antimicrobial Producers: A Review

The agricultural industry worldwide faces challenges in the struggle against plant diseases. In efforts to increase agricultural intensities, the dependency on agrochemicals for crop protection has become significantly high. Moreover, the increasing use of agrochemical-based products has resulted in multidrug-resistant pathogens and environmental pollution. This paper reviews the biocontrol capacity of plant growth-promoting microorganisms (PGPMs) originating from plants towards plant pathogens. The current trend in discovering new compounds has shown antimicrobial activity gaining immense interest due to its vast potential. On a related note, PGPMs are an aspect of that research interest that can be further explored as antimicrobial producers. In this work, the types of biocontrol mechanisms pertaining to PGPMs as well as their roles in biocontrol activity were covered. A biocontrol approach exploits disease-suppressive microorganisms to improve plant health by controlling related pathogens. The understanding of these microorganisms and mechanisms of pathogen antagonismare primary factors in ensuring improvement for future applications. Inevitably, there is indeed room for rigorous expansion with respect to PGPMs in the future of agriculture.