Can potassium-solubilising bacteria mitigate the potassium problems in India?

Abstract

The nutrients are one of the basic inputs for achieving increased crop productivity, and potassium is one of them. In a recently published nutrient budget, it has been shown that potassium became unbalanced through increased removal and increased system leakage, simplification (monoculture) and increased demand for rapid plant growth. Addressing this nutrient imbalance and shortages in developing countries, it would be required to enhance the world production of potassium fertiliser. India is not self-sufficient in producing potassium fertiliser. The entire quantities of potassium fertilisers are imported. Therefore efficient management in soil fertility is a prime concern to the scientist in view of the increasing gap between production and consumption of fertiliser with time. So, nowadays, crop nutrient stability is important to mitigate the exhaustion of soil nutrient stock for sustaining the crop yield and to reinstate the soil fertility. In these circumstances, it is suitable to study the present knowledge of substitutive sources of K. So this assessment imparts an opportunity to flourish native mineral sources of K as a substitute to impede costly remunerative fertilisers. So, bio-intrusion of potassium minerals with potassium-solubilising microorganism (KSM) would be a preferable and feasible technology to solubilise unavailable form of K minerals into available pool for plant uptake and efficiently used as a source of K fertiliser for maintaining the ecological balance and sustaining agricultural production and environmental quality. © Springer India 2016. All rights reserved.