Plants are frequently subjected to stress, external conditions that adversely affect growth, development, and productivity. Stresses can be biotic caused by living organisms like weeds, pests, diseases or abiotic which are linked to the impact of non-living factors on the living organisms in a specific environment such as: temperature variations, frost, drought or excess of water, hail, wind, salinity, and nutrient deficiency. In agriculture, another significant abiotic stress could be represented by crop stress brought by herbicide application.
Plants need the right combination of nutrients to live, grow and reproduce. When plants suffer from malnutrition, they show symptoms of being unhealthy. Too little or too much of any one nutrient can cause problems.
Soils are fundamental to life on Earth but human pressures and intensive agriculture practices on soil are reaching critical limits. Careful soil management is one essential element of sustainable agriculture and also provides a valuable lever for climate regulation and a pathway for safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity.
Soil fertilization acts directly on the soil and can improve its fertility, which is the ability of a soil to sustain plant development by providing essential plant nutrients and favorable chemical, physical, and biological characteristics as a habitat for plant growth.
Throughout the existence of agriculture, one of the main issues of interest to farmers was the issue of increasing crop yield and quality. Therefore, yield and quality are both fundamental to guarantee the profitability of the farmer.
The pressure to increase crop production in many countries, has resulted in the expansion of land area dedicated to agriculture and the intensification of cropland management with large quantities of inputs like inorganic fertilizers and synthetic chemicals. These practices have resulted in degradation of soil properties and water quality, acceleration of soil erosion, contamination of groundwater and decline of food quality. This has prompted sustainable intensification initiatives to increase yields on existing farmland while decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture.
Organic crop production is one of the alternative agricultural practices promoted for the reduction of environmental pollution. As a result, several countries have introduced organic farming practices to replace the chemical-dependent ones.
