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Environmental Business Review | Friday, September 10, 2021
Food security faces multiple challenges in modern concentrated agriculture. First, crop production rises through the large-scale employment of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to satisfy the nutritional demands of an expanding world population.
FREMONT, CA: A country's economy depends heavily on agriculture. Modern intensive agricultural practices utilize huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to satisfy the nutritional requirements of an ever-increasing population.
In agriculture, yet, rapid urbanization, dramatic changes in climate, and vast use of agrochemicals have been found to negatively affect food security and sustainability because of environmental disorders and public health hazards.
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Agrochemicals utilized indiscriminately are also dangerous to agriculture soil quality, physical properties, chemical composition (imbalance of nutrients) and biological health. However, the growth-encouraging characteristics of plant-associated microbes have huge potential to overwhelm these disputes, and they can play a key role in improving biomass and agricultural yield under greenhouse and field conditions. Improving nutrient availability (i.e., N, P, K, Zn, and S), modulating phytohormones, and controlling phytopathogens are useful mechanisms for enhancing plant growth.
This plant-microbe interaction is important for sustainable agriculture, and microbes may play a key role in decreasing the use of chemical fertilizers by acting as ecological engineers. Therefore, it is essential to prepare the inoculum, add cell protectants like glycerol, lactose, and starch, choose a good carrier material, package it properly, and deliver the biofertilizer effectively to produce solid-based or liquid biofertilizer formulations.
Recent formulation developments comprise entrapment/microencapsulation, nanoimmobilization of microbial bioinoculants, and biofilm-based biofertilizers. With these advantages, inoculating with useful microbes has emerged as an innovative, eco-friendly technology to feed the world's population.
The quality and physical properties of agricultural soils are constantly deteriorating, also their chemical composition (an imbalance of nutrients) and biological health. With their plant growth-promoting traits, plant-connected microbes have huge potential for solving these disputes and enhancing crop yields and biomass. Abiotic and biotic stress declines, and nutrient availability is enhanced. Phytohormones are regulated, phytopathogens are bio-controlled, and plant growth is improved. In preparing a solid-based or liquid bioinoculant, there are numerous components, comprising the preparation of the inoculum, the addition of cell protectants like glycerol, lactose, starch, a suitable carrier material, the proper packaging, and the best delivery practices. Entrapment and microencapsulation of microbial bioinoculants, nano-immobilization of these bioinoculants, and biofilm-based biofertilizers are some of the latest developments in formulations.
Because of the growing pollution problems, which pose grave health risks to the general public, eco-friendly and sustainable technologies were needed to be developed, decreasing synthetic fertilizers' use by developing sustainable technologies. Therefore, it has appeared as an innovative and eco-friendly technology to improve soil fertility and plant growth by utilizing beneficial microbiomes as biofertilizers in developmental agriculture practices.
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