Mohd. Sayeed Akhtar, PhD, is a Senior Assistant Professor at Gandhi Faiz-e-Aam College, Shahjahanpur, U.P., India. He received his PhD degree from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India, prior to conducting postdoctoral research at the Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland, and Chonbuk National University, Republic of Korea. He was formerly an Assistant Professor at Jimma University in Ethiopia and research fellow at the Universiti Putra Malaysia's (UPM) Institute of Tropical Agriculture. He has been listed among the top 2% of scientists in the world consecutively for the past three years, according to Stanford University in the United States. Dr.

Akhtar is the author and co-author of more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters, and has edited 21 books with international publishers. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work. He is a member of the International Society for Development and Sustainability, Japan; International Society of Environmental Relationship and Sustainability, Chennai, India; and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), Manila, Republic of the Philippines; and a fellow of the Plantae Group of the American Society of Plant Biologists. He is an editorial board member and reviewer for several high-impact international journals. His current work focuses on the molecular biotechnology, bioremediation, biomineralization, nanofertilizers, and nanobiotechnology of rhizospheric plant-microbe interactions. Khalid Rehman Hakeem, PhD, is Professor at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After completing his doctorate (botany, specialization in plant eco-physiology and molecular biology) from Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India, at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia, where he was a postdoctorate fellow and fellow researcher (Associate Professor) for several years. Dr.

Hakeem has more than 15 years of teaching and research experience in plant eco-physiology, biotechnology and molecular biology, medicinal plant research, plant-microbe-soil interactions, as well as in environmental studies. He is the recipient of several fellowships at both national and international levels. He has served as a visiting scientist at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. Currently, he is involved with several international research projects with various government organizations. To date, Dr. Hakeem has authored and edited more than 95 books with international publishers. He also has to his credit more than 200 research publications in peer-reviewed international journals and 55 book chapters in edited volumes. At present, Dr.

Hakeem serves as an editorial board member and reviewer for several high-impact international scientific journals. He is included in the advisory board of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. He is also a fellow of the Plantae Group of the American Society of Plant Biologists, member of the World Academy of Sciences, member of the International Society for Development and Sustainability, Japan, and member of the Asian Federation of Biotechnology, Korea.