Ensuring food security under intensifying climate variability requires agricultural strategies that raise productivity while reducing exposure to downside risk. Plant growth–promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and multi-strain consortia have been widely discussed as biofertilizer pathways that enhance nutrient acquisition, stress tolerance, and crop performance across adverse soils and climatic pressures (Bhardwaj et al., 2014; Jha & Saraf, 2015; Agnihotri & Mitra, 2023). Yet, agronomic innovations do not diffuse in a vacuum: risk perceptions, trust, procedural burdens, and institutional design shape farmers’ willingness to adopt complementary risk-management instruments such as India’s Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) (Choudhury, 2020; Jha, 2021; Kumar & Soni, 2020; Prasuna, 2019). This article develops an integrated research frame that treats productivity gains and risk governance as mutually reinforcing components of climate-resilient livelihoods rather than separate policy silos. Drawing strictly on the provided literature, the study proposes and applies a field-oriented mixed qualitative design combining (a) a consortia-focused agronomic evaluation logic (root-zone functional complementarity, stress-context performance, and soil-health co-benefits) grounded in PGPR and microbial consortia scholarship (Panwar et al., 2014; Padmaperuma et al., 2018; García-Fraile et al., 2015) and (b) a farmer-perception and adoption-barrier analysis aligned with PMFBY awareness and implementation evidence (Ghanghas, 2018; Devi & Gupta, 2020; Suneja, 2022; Raghavan et al., 2022). Results are presented descriptively to show how farmers interpret microbial inputs through the lens of seasonal uncertainty, input-cost volatility, and the perceived reliability of insurance processes (Patra et al., 2016; Jha, 2021). The article advances a practical governance proposition: PGPR consortia can reduce production risk at the farm level, but insurance adoption and trust must be strengthened to convert biological resilience into financeable, scalable resilience at the system level (Prakash, 2021; Shukla & Patel, 2020).

PGPR consortia, climate resilience, biofertilizers, farmers’ perceptions

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