Biofertilizers as Microbial Consortium for Sustainability in Agriculture

In the entire world, the aggregate effect of climate change is ceaselessly expanding deteriorated lands creating pressure on agricultural output and food security. The use of biofertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers can improve crop productivity and food quality under different environmental conditions. The use of bioagents minimizes the deposition of toxic agrochemicals in soil without altering its biological and functional characteristics. Biofertilizers are mainly comprised of a single or combination of microorganisms which can be endophytic or rhizospheric in nature. The communities of plants are directly or indirectly impacted by rhizospheric microorganisms which influence the structure and yield capacity. Considerable data is presently accessible on the composition and different aspects of plants along with microbial population residing in the rhizosphere and their functional capabilities. Hence, belowground microbiota is regarded as a forecaster of variations in plants and overground yield efficiency. Different approaches for microbial population improvement exist, and the use of microbial consortium (MC) as biofertilizer is one of them. Farming practices, environmental factors, and plant genotypes harbor distinct and diverse microbial communities and their functions. Currently, biofertilizer products having individual or combination of microbes exhibit restricted efficiency in specific environmental regimes. MC as a biofertilizer contributes a lot to help the plant to cope up against numerous strains (abiotic and biotic stresses) in different environmental conditions. Therefore, the selection of an appropriate MC for a particular agroecosystem and/or genotype of crops is in the direction of improving interactions between crop and the introduced microbes and is considered to be the way forward for enhancing profitability. However, the benefits of using MC over the use of individual microbes lie in their multifunctionality unmistakably demonstrated by researches. However, limited attention is being paid by the manufacturers in maintaining quality norms. In the current chapter, we focused on the progress made in the development of biofertilizers comprising MC and their quality, microbiome engineering of biofertilizers, and their impact on plants under various environmental conditions.