REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Terrestrial Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1638553
This article is part of the Research TopicRole of Microbes in One Health: The Interconnectedness of Soil, Plant and Animal Health in Maintaining Ecosystem Services and FunctionsView all 3 articles
Harnessing beneficial soil bacteria to promote sustainable agriculture and food security: A One Health perspective
Provisionally accepted
- University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
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Harnessing beneficial soil bacteria for use in agricultural practices offers an exciting and promising pathway to achieving sustainable farming. Soil microbes, including bacteria and fungi, play a pivotal role in nutrient cycling, enhancing soil structure, and promoting plant growth. Certain plant growthpromoting bacteria, such as Bacillus and Paenibacillus species, are particularly notable for their ability to improve nutrient uptake, suppress pathogens, and enhance plant resilience to environmental stress. By employing these natural bacterial species, farmers can rely less on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, helping the environment and improving soil health. Moreover, soil bacteria may possess potent enzymes systems for breaking down complex carbohydrates, so that the simpler sugars can be used to nourish plants. Genome mining of soil representatives can be used to design novel consortia of soil bacteria (including Paenibacillus odorifer, P. xylanilyticus and Streptococcus cellostaticus) to cover the maximum number of complementary enzyme activities acting on cellulosic and hemicellulosic materials. Similarly, the combination of these strains and Arthobacter humicola could be of great interest to maximise the metabolisation of lignocellulosic substrates and to reduce and revalorise food waste from the food production cycle. Soil bacteria play a pivotal role in advancing One Health by mediating interactions across human, animal, and environmental health. Future research and development should focus on optimising microbial delivery to different soils and also understanding the complex interactions within the soil microbiome to maximise their benefits in diverse farming systems.
Keywords: Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Food security, plant disease, Biopesticides, Growth hormones, Probiotics
Received: 30 May 2025; Accepted: 27 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sabater, Neacsu and Duncan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carlos Sabater, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
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