Azospirillum and its Formulations: A Review

Biofertilizers manufactured in India are mostly carrier based, using lignite or charcoal as carriers. Inspite of nearly three decades of existence of biofertilizers in India supported by central and state government, the adoption level of biofertilizers by farmers remained low. There are many reasons for such a low adoption of this technology, which are related to technological, developmental, social issues. Biofertilizers manufactured in India presently are carrier based, in general and suffer from short shelf life, poor quality, high contamination and low and unpredictable field performances. Death of the organisms in the inoculated seeds is one of the important factors contributing the failure of inoculation response in field condition. Research conducted on the inoculant production and formulation technologies is limited. A break through is needed in the inoculation technology to improve the shelf life and field efficacy of biofertilizer in India to make them commercially viable and acceptable to farmers. The present review was focused on different formulations of Azospirillum.