Many people may have thought that agricultural scientists' thinking is limited to creating hybrid crops and thinking about finding new pesticides, but agricultural scientists are doing research from various angles beyond that. Generally, many people think that agricultural scientists' research is about producing new types of fertilizers to increase agricultural yields, but rather than creating new types of fertilizers, agricultural scientists' efforts are focused on what can be done to increase yields. Rather than producing new fertilizers and pesticides, the scientists' aim is to protect crops biologically without using all these and thereby increase yields. Agricultural scientists are doing research on this.
It was common to grow grasses at some point in the crop
rotation. Grasses are perennial, producing more root zone biomass than
annual crops. This increases the total biomass in the soil, but only certain
types of microorganisms produce such biomass in large quantities.
Mixing such biomass into the soil in large quantities is
beneficial. When the field is sprayed with pesticides to prevent crop diseases,
the beneficial microorganisms are also killed along with the pathogens. Due to
this, Mycorrhiza fungi have to be mixed into the soil in many gardens
frequently.
Iron for crops
Crop growth promotion Compounds called Siderophores produced
by Rhizobacteria hold iron in the soil and make it unavailable to harmful
microbes, but Siderophores produced by Agrobacteria help plant roots absorb
iron. Some species of Trichoderma fungi help destroy pathogens. They embrace
them and some microorganisms and harmful fungi with their filaments and
dissolve them with enzymes.
Plasmids
The root zone can be made more favourable for crops by
introducing beneficial microorganisms created through genetic modification. New
strains of the bacterium Rhizobium have been created through plasmid editing.
Double-stranded DNA circles in bacteria are called plasmids. They replicate and
function like chromosomes. Such plasmid mutations also occur naturally in
bacteria.
Plasmids in the Azospirillum, Agrobacterium can enter plant
cells. Scientists believe that this can give crops traits such as resistance to
herbicides. Plants can also be genetically modified to change the chemicals
secreted by the root zone. This can change the types and proportions of
organisms living there. The root zone is now receiving a lot of attention.
The ultimate goal of
agricultural scientists is to find ways to protect crops through biological
methods, avoiding chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In countries where grain
production exceeds demand, there is an increasing trend of cultivating tree
crops instead of grain crops. Growing trees by inoculating beneficial bacteria
and fungi in the roots at the seedling stage is an excellent approach.