The Arica and Parinacota Region has particular environmental conditions that allow cultivation of vegetables during the entire year; it supplies the markets of the central area of Chile during winter. Important agriculturalproducts include tomatoes, sweet corn, potatoes, olives and peppers, among others. As well as being good for agriculture, the conditions are also favorable for plagues and diseases that affect production. Farmers have been obliged to use quantities of pesticides greater than the permitted limits, producing foods that accumulate pesticides that are toxic for human health and the environment. Also, pests resistant to these chemicals have emerged as a consequence of their intensive use.

This situation requires a rapid solution, and bio-products may be the alternative. These are biological products, usually derived from microorganisms, available in a variety of formulations, which may be classified functionally as: biocontrollers (that control plagues and diseases); biostimulants (that favor growth) and biofertilizers (that favor nutrient capture). These bioproducts are biodegradable and have little or no toxicity for humans and for the ecosystem, allowing innocuous production of vegetables.

The fungi and bacteria that produce these products are naturally capable of colonizing different plant structures, both on their surfaces (epiphytes) and inside them (endophytes), generating ecological communities that affect the growth, development and productivity of a plant. These microorganisms have a number of capabilities that mitigate situ-ations of biotic and abiotic stress through local and systematic modulation of the plant, by the production of substances that promote root growth, facilitating nutrient capture, and other molecules that aid in their assimilation, which improves their productivity. They also stimulate immunity by acti-vating induced systemic resistance (ISR), improving the response to different types of stress, and they fight diseases and plagues by competing with the pathogens, producing antagonic substances and activating ISR. These beneficial microorganisms may thus be used in agriculture and may be the source of various bioproducts.

However, in the Arica and Parinacota region there are cultivatable areas with high and increas-ing concentrations of boron and salts, which limits the use of the commercially available bioproducts. Bioproducts usually have high efficacy in environ-ments similar to those where they were obtained, and generally lose their properties if they are used in conditions different from those in their original sites, as occurs in this region. Thus it is vital to develop a solution that includes formulations of bioproducts that act optimally under the conditions that this productive sector impose.

The University of California at Davis and the Universidad de Tarapacá have responded to this challenge to study the microbial communities as sociated with a number of crops that are naturally adapted to the environmental conditions of this region. Identifying these microorganisms offers the opportunity to develop new bioproducts for agriculture that function optimally in zones where the environmental conditions limit the production of crops. These institutions will be searching for solutions that incorporate microorganisms native to arid environments, allowing the development of efficient and effective bioproducts in the condi tions imposed by this area of the country, allowing innocuous production of foods, reducing the use of toxic agrochemicals, favoring production and combating plagues and diseases using alternatives that are compatible with health and environmen-tally friendly