Review reveals microbial biofertilizers boost crop productivity and lower chemical input requirements across cropping systems, highlighting their potential for sustainable agriculture.
Key Points
Synthesize the biological mechanisms, agronomic performance, technological innovations, and deployment challenges of microbial biofertilizers as sustainable alternatives to synthetic chemical inputs.
Narrative review synthesizing microbial modes of action, biotechnology innovations, and field application data across major cropping systems.
Evaluated data from a 2025 meta-analysis of 107 field studies conducted in China alongside single-site field trials in saline soil.
Meta-analytic evidence from 107 field trials showed mean crop yield gains of 22.3% in wheat, 13.6% in rice, 12.8% in maize, and 65.4% in millet following microbial inoculant application.
Field experimentation in saline soils demonstrated that microbial inoculation permitted a 25% reduction in synthetic NPK fertilizer use in barley without lowering grain yield.
Mechanistic benefits are driven by biological nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, phytohormone production, and plant systemic defense induction against pathogens.