Desiccation-tolerant rhizobacteria

Keeping in mind the various types of direct and indirect impacts of drought on plant and human, it is necessary to overcome or mitigate the drought stress to fulfil everyone's needs. Researchers all over the globe are doing rigorous work to find-out strategies to mitigate the drought stress like development of drought-tolerant varieties, shifting the crop calendars, resource management practices, traditional breeding and genetic engineering. Most of these are not cost-effective. Some have time limitations and some have ethical issues. Therefore the ecofriendly approaches are more appreciable nowadays. One such strategy could be stress-tolerant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) having capabilities to enhance plant growth under stressful environment. Therefore screening and characterization is crucial for selecting the potential drought-tolerant PGPR. This chapter tries to show the significance of bacterial mediated drought tolerance in agricultural crops for agricultural water stress management in a sustainable way.