Preface

Fungi and their application in Agricultural or Industrial Microbiology are being utilized for food security, providing a solution to produce bioenergy, chemicals, and other bioproducts from renewable resources. The fungi that are employed in sustainable agriculture and industrial microbiology are able to secrete compounds that are useful for plant growth promotion, thereby producing organic acids, hydrolytic enzymes, functional bioactive compounds and biocatalytic agents with promising applications in various economically important fields such as environment, agriculture, food and dietary, biotechnology, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and associated sectors.

The present book, “Sustainable Utilization of Fungi in Agriculture and Industry” covers the investigations of different fungal microorganisms (filamentous fungi and yeast) and their potential application in the production of industrial enzymes, organic acids (citric acid, lactic acid, etc), biofuel (ethanol, H₂ gas) and bioactive compounds for diverse processes targeted at agriculture, bioremediation, industries, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

I strongly feel that the leading researchers with extensive, in-depth experience and expertise in fungal microbial biotechnology took the time and efforts to develop the outstanding book chapters. Each chapter is well written and explained so that the reader is given an up-to-date and detailed account of knowledge on fungal microbes and their sustainable utilization in agriculture, white biotechnology, and other innumerable industrial applications. I am very much sure that this book will be of great interest to the students, scientists, Ph.D. and postdoc researchers of life sciences especially, microbiologists, biochemists, microbial and fungal biotechnologists who are involved in investigations on fungal diversity and its sustainable utilization in agriculture and industry.

I would like to express my earnest gratitude and appreciation to my colleagues for their valuable instruction, guidance, and positive appreciation in the successful completion of this book.

I am pleased to acknowledge Prof. Tulasi Satyanarayana, Professor Emeritus Netaji Subhas University of Technology, New Delhi, for his expert direction and foreword message for this book. I am extremely thankful for his incredible support.

I thank all authors for their great association and contribution that helped in this herculean task of bringing information in different aspects of mycology.

Sincere regards