New and Future Developments in Microbial Biotechnology and Bioengineering - Chapter 1 - Biology, biodiversity, and biotechnology of Trichoderma

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of several reporting of Trichoderma biology, biodiversity, and biotechnological approaches in the extreme conditions of climate. The biology of Trichoderma demonstrates antagonistic ability in contradiction of plant pathogen, plant growth promotion, and induction of plant defense in different crop plants. They employ diverse mechanisms of mycoparasitism, encouragement of plant growth, competition for nutrients uptake, and stimulation of local and systemic resistance against climatic and biotic stresses. In this perspective, Trichoderma strains centered biocontrol practices could be helped to achieve the objective of sustainable agriculture. The taxonomy, biodiversity, and biogeography of Trichoderma are important for the search of novel biocontrol agent, and with the help of molecular methods and identification tools, which are based on multiple genes sequence analysis, it is now possible to recognize every Trichoderma isolate and/or diagnose it as a putative new species. The biotechnological application revealed the putative role of Trichoderma in producing several valuable products from waste products. Hence, this chapter elucidates complete information about different applications of Trichoderma species in the field of industries, agriculture as well as the maintenance of a sustainable environment.