Saffron, Bacteria and Mycorrhiza

Abstract

Proper management in protecting and improving soil fertility in the modern agricultural systems provides the nutrients needed by the plant and eventually increases the yield and quality of crops. Organic farming is recommended today due to its huge impact on human life and health. The use of chemical fertilizers causes a crisis of environmental pollution, especially pollution of soil and water resources, which enter the human food resources in a chain and threaten the human society. Also, chemical fertilizers in the long time destroy the physicochemical properties of the soil and make it difficult for plant roots to penetrate, and ultimately lead to loss of yield. Addressing this challenge requires the use of modern farming approaches including the use of biological fertilizers. Running towards this purpose, researchers evaluate the living and active soil community and identify beneficial soil microorganisms to further use them to increase soil fertility and increase plant growth and crop yield. As a result, these bio-fertilizers can be a suitable and desirable alternative to chemical fertilizers and one of their significant effects is to create the highest efficiency and yield in order to produce plant growth stimulants to provide absorbable nutrient. In other words, these microorganisms are able to prepare nutrients from their non-absorbable forms to the absorbable forms during the biological process. The use of these biological fertilizers as suitable nutritional elements plays an essential role towards improving the vegetative and reproductive properties of saffron. As saffron is usually grown in arid and semi-arid climates, which is poor in soil organic matter, the availability of such fertilizers during the cultivation of this plant would be very effective.