India is an agricultural country. Nearly 70% of the population thrive in rural areas, engaged in agriculture making the backbone of our economy. To meet the tremendous prenure in food production in the country, chemical fertilizers are used to enhance the crop production. However, chemical fertilizes and chemical pesticides changed the agriculture scenario in the world.

Microbes play a vital role as organic fertilizers in facilitating uptake of nutrients in a crop. Rhizobia and blue-green algae fix atmospheric nitrogen and reduce dependency upon artificial application of chemical fertilizers. Seaweeds are one of the most important marine resources of the world. Liquid fertilizers derived from seaweeds are found to be superior to chemical fertilizers.

Pollution of the environment has become a major concentration of society. Increasingly the movement away from organic methods of farming has resulted in the loss of food, nutritional livelihood and ecological security and at time, life itself.

In this circumstances, India needs a second green revolution based on environmentally safe technology. Application of biofertilizers as a component of organic cultivation is an exciting area for enhanced crop production and suggested as an alternative control measure for mitigation of environmental pollution.

Algal Research Laboratory,
Department of Botany,
University of Berhampur,
Berhampur, Orissa