Title: Azotobacter chroococcum: Utilization and potential use for agricultural crop production: An overview
Abstract: It is important to develop integrated crop production strategies that enhance the productive ability of crops in a sustainable manner for the developing nations worldwide.Intensive farming practice of high yielding crop production is mainly dependent on chemical inputs as fertilizer, pesticide and weedicides.However, excessive use of chemical inputs has negative impact on environment in the form of soil infertility, ground water contamination, imbalance of biological ecosystem and cost inputs.Soil health is an important aspect of productive sustainable agriculture and in recent years maintaining soil quality can reduce the problems of land degradation, decreasing soil fertility through use of advanced technologies in the field of biofertilizers.Biofertilizers can produce mineral nutrients through natural processes of biological nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization and also stimulation plant growth through the synthesis of plant growth promoting substances.Thus, in recent years biofertilizers have become an important component of integrated management for enhanced crop production.This paper reviews the facts and observations regarding an important biofertilizer microorganism Azotobacter chroococcum and its potential for crop production based.