Biofertilizers : Commercial Production Technology and Quality Control
Contents: Preface. 1. Soil fertility and fertilizers. 2. Soil microbiology and biofertilizers. 3. Biological nitrogen fixation. 4. Phosphate Solubilizing Microorganisms (PSM). 5. Microscopy. 6. Culture techniques. 7. Enumeration techniques of biofertilizing microorganisms. 8. Isolation, identification, cultivation and storage of cultures. 9. Estimation of quantity of nitrogen fixed in plants. 10. Inoculum production and application. 16. Marketing of biofertilizers. References. Appendices. Subject index.
Man made fertilizers have come to stay in the 20 century for increasing the output of agricultural production and to meet the ever increasing demand of human population, which has been further accentuated by the limited availability of additional fertile farm land. The pathway of productivity improvement followed so far has, however, been accompanied by an exponential increase in the consumption of nonrenewable form of energy. Manufacture of chemical fertilizers is heavily dependent on energy derived from fossil, which is getting depleted at a very fast rate. On the contrary, biofertilizers require much less energy and are dependent on energy from renewable sources such as products of photosynthesis and organic matter in the soil. The nutrients provided by biofertilizers to the agroecosystem do not pose any health risk to human which is being seriously apprehended by the use of chemical synthetic fertilizers. With almost twice the quantity of plant nutrients being removed from soil than added through fertilizers, the growing nutrient imbalance poses a major threat to sustain soil health and crop productivity.
Huge investment will be needed to install factories to meet the growing demand of chemical fertilizers. The fertilizers so produced is not only high price but also the factories themselves have and adverse effect on the environment. Chemical fertilizers are not only costly but growing awareness of environment pollution and limitations of nonrenewable resource may introduce additional constraints.
Since the ancient time, mankind has taken advantage of microorganism appreciating their beneficial role in living system. In the later half of last century, their role in agriculture has been recognized as biofertilizers. The study on microbes due to commercialization of biofertilizers in world market has taken a new turn for their high tech mass production. Biofertilizer inoculants are easy for augmentation due to simplicity in production technology developed in recent years. They are natural allies and effective for integrated nutrient management systems with a high degree of safety not only to human and plant lives but also for environmental compatibility. Incorporation of biofertilizers in combination with organic manures and inorganic fertilizers can completely obviate the detrimental effects of current agricultural practices.
The book covers mass production and quality management techniques for major biofertilizers including Rhizobium, Frankia, Azolla, blue green algae, Azotabacter, Azospirilium, PSM, VAM.
The book has been specially prepared with more emphasis on providing hands in basic micro biological techniques with detailed information required for setting up a pilot scale production facility for all the important biofertilizers to make it extremely useful to the new entrepreneurs, researchers and students. This publication would be highly useful to research workers and producers of public and private enterprises as well as UG and PG students interested in commercialization of biofertilizers.
