Nutrient Cycling: Potassium Solubilization by Microorganisms and Improvement of Crop Growth

Potassium as an Important Plant Nutrient in Sustainable Agriculture: A State of the Art

“…Therefore, currently, the research needs to focus on exploring the microbial diversity and genetic manipulation of potassiumsolubilizing bacteria to increase efficiency and to confer strain survival in the rhizosphere. Hence, this approach allows to strain for better functioning in the rhizosphere system and also helps in leading to substantial improvement in the sustainability of an agriculture system (Ryan et al 2009;Sindhu et al 2014). Consequently, KSM will be very useful for higher yield of agricultural production under adverse environmental condition.…”

“…Consequently, potassium deficiency is becoming one of the major constraints in crop production, especially in coarse-textured soils and even in fine-textured soils. Therefore, crops do respond to K fertilization in soils (Meena et al 2013;Maurya et al 2014;Sindhu et al 2014). Therefore, application of potassium fertilizer to the soil gives positive response.…”

“…Therefore, application of potassium fertilizer to the soil gives positive response. In India, there is no reserve of K-bearing minerals for production of commercial K fertilizers, so that the whole consumption of K fertilizers is imported in the form of muriate of potash (KCl) and sulfate of potash (K 2 SO 4 ) (Sindhu et al 2014). Due to increasing demand of potassium fertilizer, India ranks fourth in consumption of potassium fertilizers after the USA, China, and Brazil as far as the total consumption of K fertilizers in the world is concerned (FAI 2007).…”

Potassium-Solubilizing Microorganisms and Their Role in Enhancing Soil Fertility and Health

“…Direct application of RP and RK materials may be agronomically more useful and environmentally safer than soluble PK fertilization (Rajan et al 1996). However, K nutrients are released slowly from the rock materials, and their use as fertilizer often causes significant increase in the yield of crops (Sindhu et al 2012). Therefore, concerted efforts are made to understand the combined effects of rock material addition.…”

Potassium-Solubilizing Bacteria and Their Application in Agriculture

“…Xie (1998) reported that the use of KSMs in maize, wheat, and Sudan grass reduced the use of chemical fertilizers. The improvement in potassium uptake by crop plants due to inoculation with KSMs might be due to stimulation of root growth (Zeng et al 2012;Sindhu et al 2012), which contribute to exploration of more soil by plant roots for potassium uptake. (Sangeeth et al 2012), and rice (Muralikannan and Anthomiraj 1998).…”