Silent Underground Life

Abstract

Soil is sometimes called “the skin of the Earth.” The health of its sensitive and vulnerable upper layer strongly depends upon global industrial development sustainability and prevailing environmental problems. As is human skin, soil is an extremely complicated substance requiring adequate understanding and maintenance. From the agricultural point of view, its role is much more sophisti- cated than just providing support for the plant roots and conducting nutrients through its pores from the soil nutrients toward these roots. Misunderstanding of this complexity lasted for many decades and resulted in soil destruction, desertifica- tion, and loss of its initial fertility. Further, it has resulted in vigorous attempts to boost soil fertility with overdoses of water-soluble mineral fertilizers during several decades of the twentieth century. Uncontrolled fertilization, although initially resulting in substantial increases of soil productivity, soon backfired as accelerated eutrophication, dust storms, accumulation of heavy metals in the soil, and the grow- ing vulnerability of plants toward deceases and climatic changes. In this context, the time came to change the approach and redesign the features of fertilizers, making them an interactive component of the complex system “fertilizer–soil–roots.”