Bioformulations: for Sustainable Agriculture
Extensive interactions of plant roots with soil microorganisms affect plant nutrition either directly by influencing mineral nutrient availability or indirectly through enhanced uptake efficiency via plant root growth promotion. Beneficial microbial interactions with roots may be either endophytic or associative and can be symbiotic, mutualistic, or incidental in nature. The increased understanding of the role of root or rhizosphere associated with microbes in the nutrition and/or yield of agricultural crops in particular has resulted in promotion of their use in agricultural production as alternatives or supplements to mineral or organic fertilizers. Despite this, there is an obvious lack of market penetration of microbial inoculants. This review specifically focuses on microbial inoculants, collectively termed biofertilizers, used to improve nutrition and yields of grain, legume, oil, tuber, D. Lesueur L. Herrmann CIRAD, UMR Eco&Sols Ecologie Fonctionnelle Biogeochimique des Sols Agroecosystemes (SupAgro CIRAD INRA IRD) Land Development Department, Office of Science for Land Development, Paholyothin Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia e mail: didier.lesueur@cirad.fr; dllesueurdidier@gmail. com R. Deaker Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney, Level 4 Biomedical Building, 1 Central Ave, Eveleigh, NSW 2015, Australia L. Brau School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia J. Jansa Institute of Microbiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Videnska 1083, Praha 4 Krc, Czech Republic Springer India 2016 N.K. Arora et al. (eds. Bioformulations: for Sustainable Agriculture, DOI 10.1007/978 81 322 2779 3_4 71 and other crops. A vast number of commercial biofertilizers are available worldwide; however, the quality and efficacy of many of them are not proven or tested. In the absence of efficacious biofertilizers of good and consistent quality, the dependence on the use of mineral fertilizers is not likely to decrease. Thus the availability of high quality biofertilizers must be priority particularly in countries where crop plant production plays a key role in the economy and food security.
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