Influence Of Biostimulants On Legume Crops In Mediterranean Environments

Legume crops have an important role to the agriculture goals such as manage food and nutritional security for the growing population, as a source of plant proteins and with an increasingly importance in improving humans health, mitigate climate change and its adverse effects on the agro-ecosystems fixing atmospheric nitrogen in symbiosis with the soil bacteria rhizobia, increasing soil carbon content, and stimulating the productivity of the crops that follow (Lal, 2015). In addition, legumes contribute to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, as they release 5–7 times less GHG per unit area compared with other crops and to increase crop diversity and reduce use of external inputs (Jensen, 2012). In this context, biostimulants can play a key role in reducing the need of fertilizers and improve condition of crop and their productivity. The present abstract report the activity related the effect of some microbial biostimulants on 4 different species of legumes. The results demonstrate that the inoculation of selected microorganisms, alone or in combination, can improve the yield response of cultivation in differente species of legumes, especially in the Mediterranean environments considering their positive effect on the control of the water stress. The use of microbial biosimulants represents a sustainable tools to increase resilience of cultivations in agriculture. These methods appear to be effective for a sustainable field management and to improve the yield performance.