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Environmental change is affecting the world's agricultural productivity. This is coupled with an increase in population: according to the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the global population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Therefore, the current situation requires that we develop climate-smart technologies to improve crop productivity to sustain the ever-rising global population. Current-day farmers are introducing a considerable amount of agrochemicals to enhance crop productivity. Indiscriminate agrochemical application has altered not only the soil's physic-chemical and biological properties but also affected human health through food chain contamination. Cyanobacteria, under these changing environmental conditions, may help to resolve the problem significantly without changing the natural soil properties. In spite of their well-known stress tolerance potential, most of the cyanobacterial stress management and signaling pathways are yet to be fully characterized. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore cyanobacterial metabolism under stress as well as their regulatory pathways to exploit them for sustainable agriculture. In recent decades, the application of cyanobacteria has attracted scientists because of uniqueness, better adaptability, and synthetic products.
Diverse cyanobacterial communities with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, together with their photosynthetic properties, have demonstrated their application under field conditions. Several cyanobacterial species have thus been exploited to enhance soil fertility, mitigate biotic and abiotic stress, and contamination management.
Cyanobacterial Lifestyle and its Applications in Biotechnology has been designed to discuss different aspects of cyanobacterial physiology with the aim of helping to provide a better understanding of advanced cyanobacterial molecular biology and their metabolism to uncover the potential of cyanobacteria in the tailoring of stress smart crops for sustainable agriculture. Chapters include valuable information about the role of cyanobacteria in the evolution of life, cyanobacterial photosynthesis, stress-tolerant cyanobacterium, biological nitrogen fixation, circadian rhythms, genetics and molecular biology of abiotic stress responses.
About the author
Dr. Prashant Kumar Singh is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, Pachhunga University College, Mizoram University, Aizawl, Mizoram. He completed his Ph.D. degree from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. In his 14 years of research carrier, he has published more than 50 articles and book chapters and one book related to cyanobacteria and plant molecular biology. Dr. Singh also has exposure to various national and international institutes. Dr. Singh is also awarded by the Young Scientist Award and lifetime members of various scientific societies as well as reviewer of various peer reviewed journals.Dr. María F. Fillat is full professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology (University of Zaragoza) and leader of the group “Genetic regulation and physiology of cyanobacteria. During the last decades her work has focused on the functional characterization of the FUR (ferric uptake regulator) proteins in cyanobacteria, including their regulation, participation in regulatory networks, their relationship with redox homeostasis and their role in the synthesis of cytotoxic microcystin. She completed her PhD in Sciences at the University of Zaragoza and worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands). She also visited other laboratories at the University of Konstanz (Germany), Emory University (Atlanta, GA), Universidad de Rosario (Argentina), IBVF (Sevilla), and the University of Gèneve. Prof. Maria F. Fillat has published more than 100 research articles in international refereed journals and holds two patents. Her group has received several awards from the Economic and Social Council (Government of Aragón), the “Instituto de Estudios Turolenses and the Royal Academy of Sciences of Zaragoza. She led 13 research projects and 6 contracts with companies as a Principal Investigator (PI) and successfully organized 9 international and 3 national scientific meetings. Prof. Fillat has also supervised 10 PhD theses (3 more are in progress), 9 Diploma theses, and 13 Master projects. She has also participated in 4 teaching innovation projects, two of them as PI.Dr. Ajay Kumar is currently working as an assistant professor at Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Noida, India. Dr. Kumar completed his tenure (2018-2022) as a visiting scientist from Agriculture Research Organization, Volcani Center, Israel and doctoral research from Department of Botany, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India on the theme "Plant microbe interaction". In his research tenures, Dr. Kumar has published more than 235 scientific contributions in the form of research and review articles, books or book chapters with the leading International Journals or Publishers. He has wide area of research experience, especially in the field of Plant-Microbe Interactions, Microbial biocontrol, Postharvest management of fruits, Microbial endophytes related with the medicinal plants and cyanobacteria-pesticides interactions. Dr. Kumar actively engaged in editing book with the leading publisher like Elsevier, Springer, CRC Press, Willey and edited more than 48 books and currently serving as an Associate editor in Frontier in Microbiology, BMC Microbiology and special guest editor in Microorganisms or Plants MDPI, Journal.
