BIOFERTILIZERS: SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL CROP PRODUCTIVITY

Aradhana Dohroo* and Desh Raj Thakur

Across the globe, the greatest challenge of agriculture systems is to produce food, manage stresses, and confront the prevailed dependency on chemical inputs including fertilizers and pesticides. From crop emergence to maturity, there is an increased risk of occurrence of pests and weeds. Pathogens attack plants resulting in huge crop losses every year, which vary from 15-20% and such diseases are caused by viruses, fungi, bacteria and nematodes. Any stress management is vital in agriculture to maintain crop health and productivity so as to meet food security requirements for a continuous increase in the estimated world population. Ongoing production of agricultural crops largely depends on various soil types and surrounding environments, but crop production faces abiotic stresses also worldwide due to changing climate conditions such as rising temperature, increasing salinity, floods, drought, frequent floods, and ozone damage. It is, therefore, a challenging task to employ effective technologies for pest immunity and disease management against the current burden of the global increasing population. Thus, there is a need for a more eco-compatible technology that can somehow justify abundant agricultural crop production by considering health issues as well as harmful effects on the environment. Traditionally, soils rich in natural nutrients have been used for agriculture. Since agricultural crops rely on synthetic fertilizers and agro-chemicals for highest crop production therefore biofertilizers are a good solution to combat agricultural pests. Biofertilizers and organic farming are a holistic crop and soil management methods with little use of chemical inputs. Around 3% of the world‟s arable land is cultivated with organic farming. Organic crop biology increased from 1.7 million hectares in 2020 to 195 million hectares worldwide in 2022. The fertilizers used in this method are rock phosphate, bone meal, green manure, and paucity cake. Application of natural product fertilizers enhance crop quality and productivity and provide natural nutrients. Modern agriculture requires balanced nutrition and crop pest and disease management strategy for public health and safe environment. This process can be obtained by the use of bio fertilizers, weed, and biological control agents. Biofertilizers are natural living things containing plant nutrients that provide nutrients to the plant. On the other hand, booster focus needs on the minimum use of synthetic chemicals by focusing on biofertilizers and biocontrol agents for large crop production free of harmful chemicals.