The chemical fertiliser industry grew around the focus of energy intensive and high grade NPK complex products on grounds of economies in logistics. Other factors were their success in western farming systems, ready availability for technological transfer coupled with financial banking from banks.

Amazingly, after three decades of experience these factors lost their validity and their unsuitability to basic soil fertility and crop needs inthe tropics was noticed.

However, according to Fertiliser Association of India total production of urea will touch 196 lakh tonnes by the March 31, 1999 as against 186 lakh tonnes in 1997-98.

Fertiliser consumption, which had doubled in the '70s and '80s is unlikely to repeat this performance in the '90s. The annual compounded growth rate of food grains production which was 2.08 per cent in the '70s and 3.54 per cent in the '80s, has unfortunately slowed down to only 1.66 per cent in '90s.

Shockingly the depending crisis in the fertiliser and marked skewness in the pattern of consumption of this key input with larger application of cheaper urea and less than optimal dosage of phosphate and potash fertilisers. The consumption of nitrogenous fertilisers rose sharply from less than 8 million tonnes in 1990-91 to more than 10 million tonnes in 1997-98 whereas that of phosphate fertilisers rose only from 3.2 million tonnes to 3.9 million tonnes.

The case of potash is no different as the figure had verymarginal increase from 1.33 million tonnes to 1.38 million tonnes. It is yet another thing that every single gram of potash is imported in the country.

After the partial decontrol policies set by Manmohan Singh, instead of improvement there was tremendous setback in the application of phosphate and potash. The improvements in this situation in part were due to the fact that government apart from fixing the concessions to subsidy also fixed selling price. No wonder that during 1997-98 there was impressive pick-up in the offtake and phosphate and potash.

Nevertheless, the balanced application of nitrogenous, phosphate and potash in the ratio of 4:2:1 has been significantly affected.

In 1998-99, this ratio is expected to be far from ideal at 8.3:3.0:1.0. The situation is also because of the result of the result of distortion in selling price of their nutrients. With a result farmers increasingly applied the cheaper urea. This has resulted in the deterioration of soil to the extent of it being robbed bynitrogen and further becoming aciding unproductive soil. This certainly affected the productivity.

In the circumstances, one has no alternative but to rely on the application of biofertilizers. The term biofertilizers has to be understood in its fullest extent.

All micro-organisms have the capacity to convert about 138 million tonnes of nitrogen every year into fertiliser nitrogen. It is thus possible to meet a large portion of the total nitrogen demand through proper husbandry of micro-organisms in the crop production systems.

Bacteria and blue-green algac use atmospheric nitrogen and taxi this nutrient to the crop plants. Rhizobia are one of the other nitrogen fixers, which normally obligate symbionts in legumes. Yet some others colonize the root zones and fix nitrogen in loose association with plants. One of the most important bacterium in this group is Azospirillium. The crops that normally respond to Azopirillum bacterium are maize, bajra, barley, oats and the other forage crops.

The third groupincludes free-living nitrogen fixers like Azatohaeter and blue-green algae.

The most widely used biofertilizer Rhizobioum, colonises the roots of specific legume to form turnover like growth called root nodules which act as factories of ammonia production. Under ideal filed conditions Rhizobium legume association can fix 350-400 kg nitrogen per hectare in a season and leave substantial nitrogen for the following crop.

It must be noted that the range of nitrogen fixed per year by diverse legume is variable such as 150 kg for clover, 1100 kg for cowpea, 300kg for alfalfa, 350 kg for faba beans, 100 kg for lentil, 200 kg for lupins, 100 kg for groundnut, 80 kg for soybean, 55 kg for mung bean and 400 kg for pasture legumes such as Stylo hemata.

Nevertheless, recent genetic engineering advances over the culturing of micro-organisms as developed by Biotechnology Resource Centre has overcome this limitation and with a result BRC has transferred the novel biotechnology of production of biofertilizers at 27places in the country and most of these units are profit centres currently.

With BRC's biotechnology, another advantage many beneficiaries got is the increase of the shelf life from six months to virtually 3-5 years.

The use of blue-green algae as a biofertilizer for rice on field scale is a relatively a novel concept. Judicious use of these algae could certainly provide to India's entire rice acreage as much nitrogen as obtained from 15.17 lakh tonnes of urea.

BRC has developed simple technology of production of blue-green algae and transferred to the fields of small and marginal rice growers in many parts of the country.

BRC's recent findings also suggest that application of algal biofertilizers reduce alkalinity. And indeed this opens up possibilities for hioreclamation of such inhospitale soils.

A tiny floating fern Azolla universally seen in low-land fields and in shallow freshwater areas, harbours the blue-green alga, Anabeana azolla. The Azolla-Anabacena association is a live, floatingnitrogen factory using energy from photosynthesis to fix atmospheric nitrogen amounting to 100-150 kg per hectare annually from about 40 tonnes of biomass.

Economics: The manufacture of chemical fertiliser especially nitrogen is a high energy-budgeted process based on fossil fuels. One unit of nitrogen requires normally two units of fuel. The energy requirement for one kg fertiliser is 80 MJ (megajoules) or 11.2 KWh, (kilowatt / hour) for nitrogen 12 MJ or 1.1 KWh for phosphate and 8 MJ at (KWh) for potash.

Astonishingly microbes mimic the same process but the power bill is debited to the account of Mother Nature.

To illustrate it further it could be safely said that on the entire earth we receive over Rs 90,000 crore worth of nitrogen every year through biological sources. In terms of crop productivity, for three popular pulses viz Bengal gram, lentil and soybean alone rhizobial inoculation can generate an additional gain of approximately Rs 1,200 crore from the entire cropped area for which theinoculant cost is a very meagre amount of Rs 1 crore. Knowing this fully well,the government of India has given lot of incentives for young entrepreneurs to undertake project of production of biofertilizers.

Capital subsidy of Rs 20 lakh is offered to buy machinery. Profits up to five lakhs is totally tax free. If one uses BRC's technology to manufacture biofertilizers then total investment of Rs 30 lakhs is needed to produce turnover of around Rs 1 crore. The gestation period of the project is hardly eight months. The important thing is to establish market linkage. However, it is very heartening to note that states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh have already declared subsidy on nitrogenous and phosphate biofertilizers. In fact, according to Maharashtra State Commissioner of Agriculture Sudhir Kumar Goel, the requirement of biofertilizers of the Maharashtra State is to the tune of 65,000 tonnes per annum.

(The authors are scientists at Bio Research Centre, Mumbai)