Advances in Soil Microbiology ― Recent Trends and Future Prospects; Soil-microbe-plant Interaction

This book presents a comprehensive collection of articles illustrating the importance of microbial community structure and function for ecosystem sustainability and environmental reclamation. It addresses a diverse range of topics, including microbial diversity, physiology, genomics, ecosystem function, interaction, metabolism, and the fruitful use of microbial communities for crop productivity and environmental remediation. 

In addition, the book explores issues ranging from general concepts on the diversity of microorganisms in soil, and ecosystem function, to the evolution and taxonomy of soil microbiota, with future prospects. It covers cutting-edge methods in soil microbial ecological studies, rhizosphere microflora, the role of organic matter in plant productivity, biological nitrogen fixation and its genetics, microbial transformation of plant nutrients in soil, plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria, and organic matter transformation. 

The book also discusses the application of microbes in biodegradation of xenobiotic contaminants. It covers bio-fertilizers and their role in sustainable agriculture and soil health, biological control of insect pests and plant pathogens, and the latest tools of omics in soil microbiology, i.e. genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics, which offer pioneering approaches to the exploration of microbial structure and function.

Dr. Tapan kumar Adhya is currently the Director, South Asia Nitrogen Centre, New Delhi and also working as Professor in the School of Biotechnology, KIIT University, Bhubneswar, Odisha, India. He has more than 150 publications and 30 book chapters. He is Editor/Associate Editor of several International Research journals published by Springer.

Dr. Bibhuti Bhusan Mishra is presently working as professor and head in department of Microbiology in Orissa university of agriculture and technology, Bhubaneswar, India.

Dr. K. Annapurna obtained her M.Sc (1982) and Ph.D (1986) degrees in Microbiology from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India. She has been a pioneer researcher in the field of molecular ecology of legume - Rhizobium symbiosis, Azospirillum, Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and initiated work on soybean rhizobial genetic diversity.

Deepak Kumar Verma is an Agriculture Science professional. He is PhD Research Scholar with major specialization in Food Process Engineering (FPE), a part from theory and lab practicals at Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur (WB) INDIA, the prestigious of institute in India which having world ranking range between 225 - 250. His area of specialization during master was being Agricultural-Biochemistry.

Dr. Upendra Kumar is working as Scientist at ICAR- National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, India and also served as Visiting Scientist at CSIRO, Waite Campus, Adelaide, Australia. He obtained his M.Sc and Ph.D in Agricultural Microbiology from IARI, New Delhi and also received many National and International awards.