Soil fertility management in fruit crops amidst climate change: A review

Fruit crops offer a strong sink for sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby, aid in moderating the impact of climate change related issues. The paradigm shift from purely inorganic to either organic fertilizers or in combination with chemical fertilizers started gaining wide scale use for enhanced biogeochemical nutrient soil cycling. This change of concept later formed the basis for Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) -based strategy involving three basic components viz., microbial inoculants (biofertilizers), inorganic fertilizers, and organic fertilizers. Better responsiveness of soil microbial biomass over chemically available nutrient pool of soil to nutrient input, has led to an increased interest in measuring the quantum of nutrients held microbially. This has advocated a possibility of using changes in microbial biomass as a potential diagnostic tool of fertility measurement under ISFM practices, as best for improved organic carbon sequestration and soil microbial indices in addition to post-harvest shelf life of fruits compared to fruits raised on exclusive use of chemical fertilizers. Development of microbial consortium (microbial reactor) exploiting the native and natural microbial synergisms (with twin role as growth promoter and antagonistic to soil borne pathogens) is one of the popular methods of managing multiple soil fertility constraints occurring within the rhizosphere. Such rhizosphere specific consortia (often called as crop-microbiome) could further engineer rhizosphere's nutrient demand and supply through loading with organic manures in a much value added form using a widely accepted concept like ISFM, considered very close to climate resilient soil fertility management, a gateway to sustainable quality production.