Agriculture has a lot of responsibility as the rise in the world's population demands more food requirements. However, more than one type of biotic and abiotic stress continually impacts agricultural productivity. Drought stress is a major abiotic stress that significantly affects agricultural productivity every year as the plants undergo several morphological, biochemical, and physiological modifications, such as repressed root and shoot growth, reduced photosynthesis and transpiration rate, excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), osmotic adjustments, and modified leaf senescence regulating and stress signaling pathways. Such modifications may permanently damage the plants; therefore, mitigation strategies must be developed. The use of drought resistant crop cultivars is more expensive and labor-intensive with few advantages. However, exploiting plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) is a proven alternative with numerous direct and indirect advantages. The PGPR confers induced systemic tolerance (IST) mechanisms in plants in response to drought stress via multiple mechanisms, including the alteration of root architecture, maintenance of high relative water content, improvement of photosynthesis rate, production of phytohormones, exopolysaccharides, ACC deaminase, carotenoids and volatiles, induction of antioxidant defense system, and alteration in stress-responsive gene expression. The commercial application of PGPR as bioinoculants or biostimulants will remain contingent on more robust strain selection and performance under unfavorable environmental conditions. This review highlights the possible mechanisms of PGPR by activating the plant adaptive defense systems for enhancing drought tolerance and improving overall growth and yield.
Keywords: antioxidants; drought; induced systemic tolerance; phytohormones; plant growth promoting rhizobacteria.