Nitrogenous Fertilizers – Boon or Bane?

Abstract

Agriculture is currently facing unprecedented challenges, i.e., to provide food to the world population, and to maintain ecosystem services. Generally, overdoses of chemical fertilizers are applied by farmers in their agricultural fields to maximize crop productivity; however, approximately half of it is not taken up by the crops and gets lost in the environment due to leaching, runoff, emissions and volatilization which cause agronomical, economic, environmental concerns and health threats.