This book focuses on probiotics as sustainable foods and medicines, discussing issues such as screening and identification of probiotics, health claims, and advances in processing technologies, as well as food safety. Based on sound scientific research, the book is a unique reference resource for food scientists interested in development of probiotic based functional foods and their marketing. It will also appeal to those working in the area of regulations regarding the use of and health claims for fermented foods, both locally and globally.

This book is about the role played by microbes in their community mode in sustaining ecosystems. The descriptions given in its chapters indicate clearly that microbial communities are more effective in delivering multifaceted benefits to the soil-plant system than those offered by microbial monocultures in planktonic modes. The role these communities play in a multitude of microbe-microbe and plant-microbe interactions have not yet been fully exploited to gain benefits in this field as well as to achieve sustainability in agriculture practices. Amply discussed are the beneficial...

Plants create a dynamic micro-biosphere in the soil, around the roots, called as ‘rhizosphere’, which harbors diverse number of microorganisms for sustaining their growth and development.  A soil with diverse and multi-traits microbial communities is considered healthy to enhance crop productivity. In the last decades, rhizosphere biology has gained attention due to unraveling of new mechanisms, processes and molecules in the rhizosphere that contributes towards the promotion of plant productivity. The rhizospheric microbes and associated processes are being utilized for...

This authored book collates information on extremophilic microorganisms from around the world with special emphasis on India. The main focus of this book is to describe extreme environments as the habitats of these microorganisms, mechanisms of the extremophiles to cope up with the surrounding environment, new taxa created, their physiological properties, their biotechnological potential in the production of different biomolecules and biomaterials, and their role in sustainability. The concept of the book is to have comprehensive information on the diversity of microorganisms in one place....

This second edition of the book entitled “Microbial Communities and Interactions in extreme environments” focus on thermophilic and halophilic extremophiles from various ecosystems, their biodiversity, interactions with other organisms and functions within their hostile environment. Biotechnology of extremophiles and their potential agricultural and industrial applications is the focus of this edition. However, extremophiles may cope with their challenging environments. Information on biodiversity of extremophiles and their interactions with the surrounding biomes helps in...