The Use of Biofertilizers Can Compensate for a Reduction of 1/3 of the Fertilizer Dose

Ensuring food security in a framework of environmental sustainability is the greatest challenge of the 21st century. The rapid population growth together with changing consumption patterns associated with new lifestyles mean that total demand for food is increasing at a faster pace than that of the production capacity. To overcome this challenge we need to transform agriculture into a more efficient and less polluting activity. This may be achieved through harnessing the trillions of organisms inhabiting the soil. In this work we show how the use of microbial consortia can contribute to increased productivity and efficient use of nutrients in a maize field. The combined use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria that promote plant growth, when applied in a field experiment were able to compensate for the reduction in fertilizer by 33%. The results show that the application of the microbial consortium increased nitrogen fixing and phosphorus solubilising bacteria in the soil, which may explain the increased uptake of these nutrients by the plants.