Plant-Microbe Interaction in Improving Zinc Nutrition in Rice: A Review

Zinc is an essential micro-nutrient that affects metabolic activities, including growth and cell proliferation in all living organisms. Zinc deficiency in agricultural soil has been increasing at an accelerated rate all over the world, leading to its deficiency in plants as well as humans. Zinc solubilising bacteria (ZSB) solubilise complex zinc in soil into plant absorbable compounds through several mechanisms such as the production of acid, chelating compounds, protons etc. further improving its bioavailability in plants and humans. Improving zinc nutrition through microbes is an effective measure to overcome its deficiency. ZSB with Plant Growth Promoting (PGP) traits can be an additional advantage as along with increasing zinc amount in plant it would also promote overall growth of plants through PGP traits and can act as a biocontrol agent against several crop pathogens. In this review we attempt to study the significance of zinc; status and deficiency of zinc in Indian soil and to understand how zinc solubilizing bacteria can prove to be an effective measure to increase zinc content in plants and overcome its deficiency.