Role of Beneficial Bacteria in Plant Growth and Health Promotion

Dear Colleagues,

Since the beginning of plant lineage, plants have co-evolved with bacteria, establishing either beneficial or harmful relationships for the plants. Beneficial bacteria exert physiological functions that are complementary to plant physiology, increasing plant fitness to the challenges introduced by the changing ambient conditions and thus resulting in plant growth promotion.

Aside from elucidating the effects of new strains of bacterial species characterized by the promotion of plant growth, the present Special Issue aims to further contribute to this exciting field of study by analyzing the mechanisms involved in this bacterial–plant growth promoting effect including, but not limited to, the following: action mechanisms in the availability of nutrients; plant defense by priming; pathogen exclusion; volatile organic compound emissions; bacterial production of plant growth regulators; and synthetic community formulation. All of these mechanisms are analyzed through classical microbiology and plant morphometrics, biochemical, transcriptomic, and genomic approaches. Works examining new plant-beneficial bacteria are also welcome.

Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published or currently under evaluation for publication in another journal.

Dr. Eduardo Valencia-Cantero
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.