Sustainable agriculture and benefits of organic farming to special emphasis on PGPR

Abstract Currently climatic change and complications of continuous use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides to enhance agriculture production adversely affect the health and environment of plant, soil as well as human beings. The frequent use of agrochemicals not only affects the texture or quality of food but is also an important factor in changing climatic conditions. To mitigate the challenges of agrochemicals and climate change, organic forming is a sustainable and safer choice in sustainable agriculture. Organic farming (OF) can be simply described as the use of biofertilizers like compost or vermicompost and green manure to enhance or maintain the fertility and nutrient status of soil or biological control methods like crop rotation, mixed cropping, and fostering of insect predators to check the growth and attack of pest pathogens. In the last few decades various microbial species have also been used in OF to enhance agriculture production and in biocontrol of phytopathogens because of ecofriendly and safer applications. In this chapter we summarize the different aspects of OF and their applications in sustainable agriculture.