ABSTRACT
Nutrient is the basic need of all living organisms for their existence on this planet. The main sources of nutrient for human being are plants and their products. To comply with these needs, a human completely depends on agriculture. Modern science and technology provides various means to improve the yield and quality of the agricultural products that ranges from application of synthetic fertilizers to chemical pesticides. Application of such synthetic chemicals increases the agricultural production to a large extent but such an increase was marred with long-term side-effects of those chemicals to both the flora and fauna. It is evident that the deposition of 154unused chemicals in the soil leads to the destruction of soil microflora, loss in productivity and many health hazards due the entry of such chemicals into the food chain of human being. These problems provoked biologists to look for sustainable alternative new product that does not have such drawbacks. One such sustainable alternative is to look for fertilizers that have biological origin. Biofertilizer, obtained from natural organisms, has almost no side-effects towards the environment and the living organisms including human. Microbes capable to fix nitrogen can play pivotal role in the development of biofertilizers as they can make nitrogen available to plants that is essentially required for their growth as macronutrient. One such free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which can be used as biofertilizer, is Azospirillum. Azospirillum can be a potential agent for the increase in production of different agricultural product. The overall focus of this chapter is on the production, utilization and efficiency of Azospirillum and how it is helpful in improving the agricultural yield without side-effects.
