Table 1.

Several representative applications of microbes in crop plants. ACC, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid; AMFs, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; IAA, indole-3-acetic acid; JA, jasmonic acid; ABA, abscisic acid; PGPBs, plant growth-promoting bacteria; PGPFs, plant growth-promoting fungi.

Research Aspects	Microbes/ Microbiomes	Beneficial Traits	References
Rhizobia/ Frankia in colonization with host plants	Rhizobia/ Frankia spp.	Rhizobium spp. promoted the growth of rice seedlings and solubilized silicate;	[160]
		Bradyrhizobium japonicum helped soybean in resisting arsenic contamination in soil	[161]
		Frankia casuarinae CcI3 formed nodules and promoted the growth of Casuarina equisetifolia	[163]
Positive effects of mutualistic symbioses with fungi on stress resistance	AMFs	Rhizoglomus intraradices reduced the relative abundance of pathogenic fungi in plant soil	[10]
		AMFs promote rice and wheat in resisting drought	[158,159]
PGPB/PGPF applications in improving plant growth, productivity, and resistance	PGPBs	Productions of IAA, ACC deaminases, JA and ABA	[55,56,57]
	PGPFs	Trichoderma spp. and yeasts help plant in resisting diseases	[70,73,74,75,76,77,78,79]
Allelochemical effects/soil ameliorations	Microbiomes in soil	Reductive soil disinfestation can reduce the allelochemical effect in soil.	[153]
		Soil amendments associated with changes in the compositions of soil microbiomes	[19,119]
Effects of microbiota on the production of secondary metabolites in plants	PGPBs/AMFs/Paraconiothyr-ium	AMFs improve the content of gesenosides in P. ginseng planting	[10]
		Endophytic fungi Paraconiothyrium spp. in Taxus chinensis can produce taxol	[171,172,173]
		Azospirillum, Azotobacter, Pseudomonas and Bacillus improved the alkaloid content in Withania somnifera	[62]
		P. putida and P. fluorescens were proved to improve tropane alkaloid production of Hyoscyamus niger under water deficit stress	[63]