Executive Summary : | Chemical pesticides and fertilizers which steered the ‘green revolution’ in the 1950-60’s came as a ‘mixed blessing’ for humankind. It enhanced food productivity, but at the cost of environment and society. However, it dramatically increased the ‘quantity’ of the food production but at the same time decreased the ‘nutritional quality’ and the ‘soil quality’ over the years. It deteriorated the biophysical resource base of soil that severely affects the beneficial soil organisms which help in renewing natural fertility. It also impaired the power of ‘biological resistance’ in crops making them more susceptible to pests & diseases. On the other hand, despite the large reserves of minerals (K, P, Zn) available on lithosphere, very less is available in soluble forms for plant uptake. This leads to our dependency on chemical fertilizers to meet the need of feeding the escalating population. Hence, to reduce our dependency of chemical based fertilizers, there is a great need to develop bioformulations which can solubilize these insoluble minerals for sustanable agriculture.To address these important issues pertianing to agriculture, the project aims to enhance the potential of bacterial population capable of organophosphates degradation, mineral solubilization and plant biostimulant production by applying design of experiments (Taguchi approach). Many bacterial species like Azotobacter, Bacillus, pseudomonas etc. have shown great potential to degrade these toxic pesticides at the same time are noteworthy for their plant growth promotion (PGP) activity. This attritube of microbial species is of great significance and hence the project is aimed towards developing bacterial formulation(s) after applying process optmization for enhanced degradation and mineral solubilization potential.The success of microbial assisted actions using active microbes is dependent on their survival or adaptability after being released into the site of action, which will be evaluated on pot and field based experiments. The best combination of capable bacterial formulation showing success at pot experiments will be augmented to use in field experiments. The plant nutrient uptake, degradation of organophosphorous pesticide levels and other parameters will be studied to evaluate the efficacy of the whole process. Soil metagenomics will be studied to understand the microbial functionality and dominance of the inculated population. The study site with extreme climatic conditions has been chosen to develop extremophilic robust microbes which can perform in adverse climatic conditions and hence the study will be carried parallely at different geographical locations including agricultural soils of northern western Himalayas and Central west subtropical India (Kashmir and Rajasthan). |