Role of Azospirillum in the Improvement of Legumes

A rapid and sustained increase in crop production is one of the essential steps to meet the food demands of the growing human population all over the world. Constant and unbalanced use of chemical fertilizers used to boost the crop productivity on the other hand is causing decrease in nutrient uptake leading to decreased crop yields. Moreover, the use of chemical fertilizers has several other drawbacks, like they are expensive and cause ground water, soil, and atmospheric pollution. Long-term sustainability in agriculture is possible only through the use of low cost farm grown inputs, which work in harmony with the nature. Biofertilizers in this regard act as perpetually responsible input helping in better maintenance of crop nutrient as well as soil health. Azospirillum, an associative symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacterium, has a higher nitrogen-fixing potential. Though, a number of papers have highlighted the potential application of this microbe, further more research is still needed on Azospirillum to understand the mechanism by which the introduced microorganism benefit the crop. The present review addresses the central issues of Azosprillum application either alone or in combination with other plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria for the benefit of the crops.