Crops Nutrient use Efficiency

Abstract

During the post-war "green revolution," the paradigm for obtaining high yield was based on the response of plants to the use of energy and fertilizers (considered at the time as limitless sources) and intense mechanization, with the consequent development of high-yield varieties (HYVs), which brought a significant increase in agricultural productivity. However, with the oil crisis in the 1970s, the era where the environment was modified (irrigation, heavy fertilization, mechanization, and other practices) to adapt it to the needs of the crops came to be outdated. Thus, the new emerging era in agriculture needs to be based on the adaptation of the plant to the environment, developing sustainable agricultural production systems (no-tillage, green manure, agroforestry, and other agrosystems), with production stability and advanced technologies, but with low-cost, as the biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) or the use of microorganisms growth promoters. In addition, areas once considered marginal to agriculture, under abiotic stresses and poor soils, such as the Brazilian Savannah "Cerrado," are now exploited for agricultural production to sustain the world's growing population. Therefore, the key to the agriculture of the future, especially in these marginal areas, so common in the tropical region, is the selection and cultivation of plants with greater efficiency in the use of nutrients, the so-called low input varieties (LIVs), associated with the diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices.