Biofertilizer Application Technology in Tomato: Methods and Effects

During the last 50 years, vegetable production has increased tremendously due to enhanced consumption of chemical fertilizers. Now, there are indications that the highly productive fertilizer and seed technologies introduced over the past several decades may be reaching a point of diminishing returns.Health and ecological hazards and depletion of non-renewable sources of energy etc. are some of the features of long-term usage of indiscriminate and unbalanced chemical fertilizers. Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crop of the world grown over an area of 3.95 million hectares producing 102.26 million MT annually. Experiments using bio-fertilizers have been done throughout the globe but very scanty information is available on their methods of application and their integrated use with synthetic fertilizers in tomato crop. This book therefore, provides newer approach for increasing crop yields, sustaining them at a high level and maintaining proper soil and human health by including an integrated approach of organic and inorganic fertilizers and also of organic and biofertilizer combination, thus excluding chemical fertilizers altogether in tomato.