Scientists develop marine algae-based biofertilizer

With demand for agro-products produced from organic manure instead of chemical fertilizers going up in developed countries and efforts to boost production to meet the demand of growing population across the globe, the search was on for locating alternative sources of biofertilizer with many advantages.

The ocean, containing a variety of marine algae, proved to be a perennial source and the technology was expected to go a long way. The application of the algae-based marine biofertilizer had many advantages over conventional and synthetic fertilizer.

There were, however, only a handful of firms engaged in manufacturing biofertilizer using sea weed at present. Research proved that the sea weed provided a very good source of macro and micro-nutrients, vitamins and plant growth regulators such as cytokinins and the biofertilizer in different concentrations could be prepared to benefit agriculture.