|
Unlimited Tutoring & Homework Help
- Instant Help. Connect to a Tutor Now. »
- K-12, College and AP Exams
- 24 x 7 Private Tutoring
|
|
Soil is a living medium consisting of physical part - called as soil particles, chemical part - consisting of various compounds as well as biological part - consisting of various microbes, vertebrates, invertebrates inhabiting in soil. Unless all these components are kept in harmony, the crop plants would suffer by poor nutrient availability. Nutrients are made available to crop roots through the living media of soil mainly by processes called as
- Cation exchange and anion exchange
All the nutrients in the soil are not available to crop roots. Part of nutrients may be in available form, some part may be in fixed unavailable form, some other part may be lost and reach the deeper layers. The availability pattern of nutrient changes from soil to soil (based on their clay content, porocity and water holding capacity), from crop to crop (based on the rooting characters, their ability to absorb or adsorb the available nutrients), from situation to situation (based on soil pH, available water, temperature). As there are large number of varying types of soils in varying climatic situations being used to grow varieties of crops with differing abilities to make use available nutrients, the expressions of crops in terms of their yield potentiality vary to a great extent. There cannot be a uniformity in performance of otherwise potential crop in varying soil and climatic situations.
Although the crops are conventionally grown by applying chemical fertilizers, continuous use of fertilizers has resulted into number of ecological problems like drinking water pollution, loss of soil fertility besides reduced effectiveness in increasing the crop yields. To effectively tackle this situation many technologies have been evolved. One of the most effective technology in nutrient management is Biofertilizers.
