Biofertilizers and Their Importance in Environmental and Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

The use of biofertilizers has become a great hope for Egyptian agriculture, particularly in the field of production of medicinal plants, especially when the economic and environmental points of view are considered, since they reduce the environmental pollution and production costs, in addition to improving the quality. Therefore, the influence of using locally isolated nitrogen fixing bacteria as biofertilizers were studied. The isolates used were three representative strains of either Azotobacter and Azospirillum (two isolates of Azotobacter out of 60 isolates, these isolates were Az.NP7-Az.PR1, and one isolate of Azospirillum out of 60 isolates, this isolate was As.Pp1 ) which were screened for their activity in nitrogen fixing and stimulation effect by used root exudates of black-cumin plants and used for further inoculation studies as biofertilizers. These isolates were isolated at random from rhizosphere and rhizoplane of black-cumin, parsley and fenugreek cultivars at the different stages of growth. The effect of inoculation with N2-fixing bacteria ( biofertilizer ) on growth plant characteristics of tested medicinal plants ( Nigella sativa, Trigonella foenum-graecum and Petroselinum sativum ) plants were studied. Inoculation was conjugated with the application of four doses of mineral N, i.e. 0, 50%, 75% and one full dose ( 100% ) from the recommended doses. Results obtained showed that the application of biofertilizers ( N2-fixers ) produced better growth and reduced the N requirement in many medicinal plants such as Nigella sativa, Trigonella foenum and Petroselinum sativum compared with untreated plants.

Effect of Nitrogen and Biofertilization, Seaweed Extract and Thiamine on Growth, Yield and Essential Oil of Parsley Plant

“…Moreover, it produced some photohormones such as indole acetic acid, gibberellins and cytokinins, as well as, antibacterial substances which is vital (Hauwka, 2000). Our results were similar to those reported by Abdallah et al (2012) and Shehata (2019) The recent study showed that SE as well as Vit. B1 significantly increased almost all assessed traits compared with that of tap water treated plant on both seasons.…”

“…Biofertilizers are one of these bio-stimulants which afford an economically cheap and ecologically safe fertilizer moreover, they are vital for sustainable agriculture by reducing the doses of chemical fertilizers (Chatterjee et al, 2017). Minia azotein (MA) (N-fixing biofertilizer) as a bio-stimulant has been applied to reduce mineral N fertilizer of different herbs (Abdallah et al, 2012) and (Shehata, 2019) on parsley; (Abdou et al, 2020) on fennel and (El-Sayed et al, 2020) on dill.…”