Reinstating soil microbial diversity in agroecosystems: The need of the hour for sustainability and health

It has been reported that collapse of soil microbial diversity, mainly due chemical inputs leads to degradation of conventional agroecosystems. Indirect methods related to manipulation of plant and animal components in the ecosystems have been currently practised to reinstate the microbial diversity. However, those methods are laborious and time-consuming, and hence less efficient. Also, there are limits to those management methods due to ever increasing global food demand, particularly in tropics. Therefore, we have to look for methods that sustain productivity of large-scale conventional croplands even with continuous mono-cropping. This article reports that direct soil application of developed microbial communities in biofilm mode increases microbial diversity in the agroecosystems through breaking dormancy of microbial seed bank. That contributes to strengthen biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship, which leads to agroecosystem sustainability. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.