Tomorrow’s agriculture, challenged by increasing global demand for food, scarcity of arable lands, and resources alongside multiple environment pressures, needs to be managed smartly through sustainable and eco-efficient approaches. Modern agriculture has to be more productive, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Microbial-based bioformulations that increase plant performance are greatly needed, and in particular bioformulations that exhibit complementary and synergistic effects with mineral fertilization. While macronutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and sulfur (S) supplied by mineral fertilizers are vital to crop production, agriculturally beneficial microorganisms may also contribute directly (i.e., biological N2 fixation, P solubilization, and phytohormone production. Capacity of legumes to fix atmospheric nitrogen through symbiotic association, with rhizobia root nodule bacteria that comprise Rhizobium, Bradyrhizobium, Sinorhizobium, Azorhizobium and Mesorhizobium could be used to increase agricultural productivity (Kebede, Kebede, 2021). Meanwhile a sum of the findings may have been expected, the complex biological process underlying microbial consortia inoculants strengthing remains challenging. Our research has been focused on microbial consortia inoculation in future study’s to extends the potential of various beneficial bacterial inoculants the combination of two or more microbes together i.e consortium. Field experiments were conducted during kharif seasons of 2020-21 and 2021-22 at Research Farm of Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Agricultural University, Parbhani, Maharashtra to investigate the effect of microbial consortia inoculation and Chemical fetilizers on productivity and soil properties in soybean-chickpea sequence on Vertisol. The treatments detailed in kharif for soybean were microbial inoculants (S1), uninocualted control (S2), Rhizobium species + Bacillus megaterium (S3), Rhizobium species + Pseudomonas striata and (S4) Rhizobium species + Thiobacillus thiooxidant. Chemical fertilizers (T1) control i.e. without fertilizers, (T2) 50% RDF, (T3) 75 % RDF and (T4) 100 % RDF. After harvest of soybean, on the same plots were cultivated chickpea in rabi season with same treatments. The results indicated that the treatment combination of microbial inoculation (S3) Rhizobium species + Pseudomonas triata along with 100 % RDF was observed that the statistically highest nutrient content, uptake and yield of soybean and chickpea.

Microbial consortia, chemical fertilizers, yield, nutrient, soybean-chickpea, Vertisol

As the above discussion, it can be concluded that, the yield nutrient content and uptake of soybean and chickpea were improved with consortia of Rhizobium species + Pseudomonas striata (Consortia II) inoculation over other inoculant treatments along with 100 per cent recommended dose of fertilizers. Pooled data of seed and straw yield significantly increased in treatment (S3) Pseudomonas triata + Bradyrhizobium + Pseudomonas striata and lowest was found in uninocualted control.

Syed Javed, Syed Ismail, Waikar S.L. and More S.S. (2023). Effect of Microbial Consortia Inoculation on N, P and K Content, Uptake and Yield of Soybean (Glycine max L. merill.) and Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) on Vertisol. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(11): 99-106.