Emerging crops and plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB): a synergistic approach to climate-resilient agriculture

This review highlights the benefits of mutualistic plant-microbe interactions in enhancing the resilience of emergent crops and underlies the potential of these crops as valuable resources for exploring novel plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB). Emergent crops such as quinoa, amaranth, millet, lupins, hemp and desert truffles exhibit physiological and ecological traits that make them suitable for stress-prone environments. PGPB offer sustainable solutions to mitigate abiotic stress by improving nutrient availability, modulating phytohormone levels, enhancing root development and inducing systemic resistance. While their benefits have been extensively documented in model crops under controlled conditions, their application in emergent crops remains underexplored. This review examines current knowledge on the individual and combined roles of these crops and microbes, highlighting specific examples where PGPB have improved plant performance, yield and stress tolerance. Microbial inoculants show potential not only to boost productivity but also to reduce agrochemical inputs, contributing to sustainability. The review also discusses the need for tailored microbial formulations and effective field application strategies to bridge the gap between experimental research and real-world agricultural practices. Identifying key knowledge gaps, it emphasizes the importance of further research on strain specificity, crop-microbe interactions and multi-strain consortia for scalable and climate-smart agriculture. Ultimately, harnessing the synergisms between PGPB with emergent crops could convert marginal lands into productive, climate-smart farms, increasing food security in the face of environmental challenges posed by global climate change.