The Development History of Organic Fertilizer

In the Roman era, farmers discovered that planting cereal crops in fields previously used as leguminous plants increased their yields, and therefore noticed that bacteria could enrich the nutrients in agricultural soils. Until the 19th century, alfalfa growers in Germany and some soybean growers in the United States used the soil from alfalfa or soybean fields to transfer and inoculate new farmland, thereby increasing crop yields. In 1838, French agricultural chemist J.B. Boussingault discovered that leguminous plants could fix nitrogen. And in 1843, the first agricultural experimental station was established to conduct precise analysis of crop yield and composition in various crop rotation systems.

From 1886 to 1888, German scientist H. Hellriegal proved under sand culture conditions that leguminous plants can only fix nitrogen in the atmosphere by forming rhizobia. In 1888, Dutch scholar M.W. Beijerinck isolated rhizobia, which was a breakthrough in microbial fertilizers. It is now clear that that is the function of rhizobia. The discovery of these bacteria prompted the first American company, Natle Corporation, to produce and sell soil bacterial inoculants in 1898. Since then, many bacterial preparations have been used for seed mixing and coating of soil and crop seeds.

In the 1920s, some new microbial preparations were used for field soil and crops, but the results were not very satisfactory. In the 1940s, the US Department of Agriculture issued licenses for biopesticides, and to date, over 20 different microbial products have been used for this purpose.

In 1937, Soviet microbiologists Krasynikov and Mishuskin developed the "nitrogen fixing bacterial agent". Thus, it pioneered the use of bacterial fertilizers, but due to various reasons, the large-scale production of this microbial fertilizer has been halted. Around 1940, Asia developed a bio fertilizer primarily composed of cyanobacteria (algae) for use in rice fields. It still plays a significant role in sustainable agriculture.

Regardless of the history of biological fertilizers, microbial preparations continue to advance. Since the 1980s, people have been paying great attention to the use of biological fertilizers for the environment and crops, because these products can effectively solve some existing problems, especially pollution-free and eliminate environmental pollution. Therefore, it is very difficult to develop a fertilizer that has both fertilizer function and the ability to eliminate environmental pollution.