Biofertilizers: Sustainable Solutions for Agricultural Productivity

Dohroo A and Thakur DR

Published on: 2025-04-30

Abstract

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. From crop emergence to maturity, there is an increased risk of occurrence of pests and pathogens. Pathogen attack data showed heavier crop losses every year, which occurred 15-20% and was caused by viruses, fungi, and bacteria. Stress management is vital in agriculture to maintain crop productivity and to meet food security requirements for a continuous increase in the estimated population. Ongoing production of agricultural crops largely depends on various soil types and surrounding environments, but crop production faces abiotic stresses 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 producing community. Thus, there is a need for a more eco-compatible technology that can somehow justify abundant agricultural crop production by considering health issues above harmful effects on the environment [1]. Traditionally, soils rich in natural nutrients have been used for agriculture. Biodegradable agricultural crops rely on synthetic fertilizers and agro-chemicals. Organic farming is a holistic full crop and soil management method with little use of 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 may enhance crop quality and productivity by creating imbalance nutrients. To avoid this pressure, modern agriculture requires balanced nutrition and crop disease. This process can be obtained from bio fertilizers, weed, and parasitic fungi [2]. Biofertilizers are natural living things containing plant nutrients that provide nutrients to the plant. On the other hand, booster focuses on the maximum use of synthetic chemicals by focusing on quick and large crop production.