The friendly fungus
Scientists and some farmers are betting on a fungus to reverse declining soil productivity.
Single, the organism is microscopic, just about the diameter of a strand of hair. Its tendency to form colonies on plant roots saddled it with the name mycorrhiza, from the Greek words for fungus and root. Today, the food security of over a billion people depends on whether the mycorrhiza thrives again on Indian soil, after being devastated by the extensive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Mycorrhiza colonies help the roots of a plant absorb water and minerals better. They also convert some nutrients into the soluble form required by the plant, and protect it against disease causing microorganisms. In return, the mycorrhiza taps its diet of carbohydrates from the plant. But the extensive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides has lowered the presence of the fungus from 20-50 spores per gram of soil to just half a spore per gram. Soil fertility declined and so did farm output.
In 1999, Velagapudi Maruthi Rao, then chairman of KCP Sugar and Industries Corporation Ltd, was one of the first to put two and two together. Farmers in KCP's command area in the otherwise well-irrigated Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh saw their sugarcane yield go down to 12 tonnes per hectare from levels of 16 tonnes or more they used to harvest historically. Rao realised that chemicals were to blame, and began looking for ways to improve soil productivity.
As luck would have it, just that year, after 13 years of hard work, scientists at the Centre for Mycorrhizal Research of the Tata Energy Research Institute, as The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) was then known, had achieved a breakthrough. They managed to successfully cultivate mycorrhizae on a semi-synthetic medium in a sterile environment. TERI commercialised it the next year, and KCP became the first company to license the technology from it. Today, most sugarcane farmers in KCP's command area spread over 30,000 acres use the mycorrhiza grafts, which are sold as a powder. Farmers have reduced the use of chemical fertilisers by 25 per cent, sugarcane yield has increased by about two tonnes per hectare, and so has sugar recovery.
The problem that Rao encountered then is today spread across the country. Land productivity in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh - part of the so-called green belt - has declined by three to seven per cent in the last three years. India's land productivity is significantly lower than in countries such as China, the United States and the global average (see The Fallout).
For the 114 million ha under cultivation in India, farmers use 48 million tonnes of chemical fertilisers annually. This carpet of chemicals has killed practically all the beneficial organisms in the soil. "Yield gains stopped decades ago and yield fatigue has set in because of unsustainable farming practices,'' says P.C. Kesavan of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. This is particularly worrying considering that by 2025 India's population will exceed 1.50 billion people and the demand for foodgrain will be over 300 million tonnes as against the current production of 200 million tonnes. India needs to dramatically improve the soil productivity if it is not to be dependent on imports to meet its food demand. "Otherwise where is the question of food security?" he asks.
It is dj vu for India. "In the 1960s, we faced a similar situation and the Green Revolution came to our rescue by increasing farm output -but at a cost," Kesavan says. It triggered large-scale use of fertilisers and pesticides, which hurt the soil in the long run. "What we need today is an evergreen revolution. We need to achieve land productivity gains in perpetuity without causing ecological harm,'' he explains.
According to Alok Adholeya, Director of Biotechnology and Management of Bioresources Division at TERI, mycorrhiza does just that. It has delivered an yield increase of up to 25 per cent in various farms across the country. The reduced use of chemical fertilisers has also improved the health of the soil.
Mycorrhiza can be used on a variety of crops, including sugarcane, potato, onions, garlic and wheat. It is also cost-effective. "The cost of adding mycorrhiza is lower than the savings from reduction in chemical fertiliser use. The yield gains add to the profits,'' says V. Vijaya Kumar, a Deputy Manager at KCP.
Mycorrhiza also has the ability to bring dead soil back to life. TERI has used the organism to reclaim land where fly ash from thermal power plants is dumped (India has 30,000 ha under fly ash). It has also been effective in reclaiming land contaminated by effluents inorganic and sludge.
"India has over 55 million ha of fallow/waste land that needs to be brought under cultivation if we are to increase our food production substantially. Mycorrhiza can help us,'' TERI's Adholeya says. Ideally, these factors should have made mycorrhiza the most sought after biofertiliser today. But TERI has had to give away licences. Since 2000, it has licensed six companies, including KCP, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Symbiotic Sciences and Cosme Biotech, to produce and market the product. The aggregate capacity that the licensees have set up so far to manufacture mycorrhiza is just 5,000 tonnes per annum. While this is a quarter of India's bio-fertiliser production capacity, it is just a pinhead next to the 48 million tonnes of phosphatic fertilisers that are used every year. Adholeya blames it on the inadequate extension systems of the government. "We are neither educating the farmers nor improving their skills," he says.
Most farmers are poor and live by the day, so although they may be aware of the damage that chemical fertilisers inflict on the soil, they are afraid to take the risk of slashing the use of such nutrients. "They are hesitant to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers for fear of lower productivity,'' explains Adholeya. Also, there is no policy instrument to wean farmers from chemical fertilisers and encourage the use of bio-fertilisers such as mycorrhiza.
The product has a greater acceptance abroad than in India. Such is the demand for the TERI product in the US and Europe that Symbiotic Sciences, one of the licensees, will soon be setting up a production facility in North America.
"In the US and Europe, adaptability to a new technology is high. People want to try new things,'' says Rakesh Malhotra, Managing Director of Symbiotic Sciences.
Adholeya points out that mycorrhiza will be one of the first biosystem technologies to move from India to the US. "We will be even happier if farmers here begin to use it on a large scale and help India become self sufficient in foodgrain production - after all, it has been designed and developed for them.''
Mycorrhiza colonies help the roots of a plant absorb water and minerals better. They also convert some nutrients into the soluble form required by the plant, and protect it against disease causing microorganisms. In return, the mycorrhiza taps its diet of carbohydrates from the plant. But the extensive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides has lowered the presence of the fungus from 20-50 spores per gram of soil to just half a spore per gram. Soil fertility declined and so did farm output.
In 1999, Velagapudi Maruthi Rao, then chairman of KCP Sugar and Industries Corporation Ltd, was one of the first to put two and two together. Farmers in KCP's command area in the otherwise well-irrigated Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh saw their sugarcane yield go down to 12 tonnes per hectare from levels of 16 tonnes or more they used to harvest historically. Rao realised that chemicals were to blame, and began looking for ways to improve soil productivity.
The problem that Rao encountered then is today spread across the country. Land productivity in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh - part of the so-called green belt - has declined by three to seven per cent in the last three years. India's land productivity is significantly lower than in countries such as China, the United States and the global average (see The Fallout).
For the 114 million ha under cultivation in India, farmers use 48 million tonnes of chemical fertilisers annually. This carpet of chemicals has killed practically all the beneficial organisms in the soil. "Yield gains stopped decades ago and yield fatigue has set in because of unsustainable farming practices,'' says P.C. Kesavan of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. This is particularly worrying considering that by 2025 India's population will exceed 1.50 billion people and the demand for foodgrain will be over 300 million tonnes as against the current production of 200 million tonnes. India needs to dramatically improve the soil productivity if it is not to be dependent on imports to meet its food demand. "Otherwise where is the question of food security?" he asks.
It is dj vu for India. "In the 1960s, we faced a similar situation and the Green Revolution came to our rescue by increasing farm output -but at a cost," Kesavan says. It triggered large-scale use of fertilisers and pesticides, which hurt the soil in the long run. "What we need today is an evergreen revolution. We need to achieve land productivity gains in perpetuity without causing ecological harm,'' he explains.
According to Alok Adholeya, Director of Biotechnology and Management of Bioresources Division at TERI, mycorrhiza does just that. It has delivered an yield increase of up to 25 per cent in various farms across the country. The reduced use of chemical fertilisers has also improved the health of the soil.
Mycorrhiza can be used on a variety of crops, including sugarcane, potato, onions, garlic and wheat. It is also cost-effective. "The cost of adding mycorrhiza is lower than the savings from reduction in chemical fertiliser use. The yield gains add to the profits,'' says V. Vijaya Kumar, a Deputy Manager at KCP.
Ground reality
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"India has over 55 million ha of fallow/waste land that needs to be brought under cultivation if we are to increase our food production substantially. Mycorrhiza can help us,'' TERI's Adholeya says. Ideally, these factors should have made mycorrhiza the most sought after biofertiliser today. But TERI has had to give away licences. Since 2000, it has licensed six companies, including KCP, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Symbiotic Sciences and Cosme Biotech, to produce and market the product. The aggregate capacity that the licensees have set up so far to manufacture mycorrhiza is just 5,000 tonnes per annum. While this is a quarter of India's bio-fertiliser production capacity, it is just a pinhead next to the 48 million tonnes of phosphatic fertilisers that are used every year. Adholeya blames it on the inadequate extension systems of the government. "We are neither educating the farmers nor improving their skills," he says.
Most farmers are poor and live by the day, so although they may be aware of the damage that chemical fertilisers inflict on the soil, they are afraid to take the risk of slashing the use of such nutrients. "They are hesitant to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers for fear of lower productivity,'' explains Adholeya. Also, there is no policy instrument to wean farmers from chemical fertilisers and encourage the use of bio-fertilisers such as mycorrhiza.
The product has a greater acceptance abroad than in India. Such is the demand for the TERI product in the US and Europe that Symbiotic Sciences, one of the licensees, will soon be setting up a production facility in North America.
"In the US and Europe, adaptability to a new technology is high. People want to try new things,'' says Rakesh Malhotra, Managing Director of Symbiotic Sciences.
Adholeya points out that mycorrhiza will be one of the first biosystem technologies to move from India to the US. "We will be even happier if farmers here begin to use it on a large scale and help India become self sufficient in foodgrain production - after all, it has been designed and developed for them.''
