ABSTRACT
Fertilizers are essential for healthy crop growth and maximizing yield. One of the greatest challenges of this century is to increase crop productivity in order to meet the food requirement of the next 5 decades. The role of fertilizers has gained increasing importance as high agricultural production per unit is expected from shrinking land and scarce water resources. However, fertilizer use in the country is imbalanced. Fertilizer use at farm level is very low for potash and phosphorus. The deficiency of primary macronutrients and some micronutrients is alarming for the fertility status of our soils and current fertilizer use in the country. This chapter is a focused insight on the role of fertilizers in crop production, the current status of fertilizer use, constraints associated with fertilizer supplies, as well as second generation approaches used to increase fertilizer use efficiency and to develop guidelines for the balanced use of fertilizers in the country. This chapter also discusses the role of gypsum in improving agricultural production from salt affected land, and the various constraints to gypsum availability and acceptability.
