Are they Fertilizers or Pesticides or Immunity Enhancers or Something more?

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In Agriculture, conventionally, we have learned to classify substances either as pesticides or fertilizer or fungicides or plant growth regulators and so on.

Lets think of Urea and it is a fertilizer. Endosulfan is a pesticide, glyphosate is a herbicide and so on.

This is true for most of the chemical substance. Of course, there are exceptions like potassium phosphite - fungicide as well as fertilizer.

However, when it comes to Microbes, we can't label them like the way we can do about chemicals.

Lets take the example of most humble microorganism in my point of view - Azotobacter. Azotobacter has been labelled as a nitrogen fixing bacteria.. It is sold as a fertilizer on legal basis. It is interesting to know that many strains of this organism do show phosphate solubilizing properties. Moreover recently it was found to resist the growth of numerous plant pathogenic fungi through production of siderophores. More over they are also known to produce phyto-hormones. Through production of phyto-hormones they can alter the plant growth too. These facts show that it is impossible to label Azotobacter as a Fertilizer. It do show properties of fungicide and plant growth regulator in addition to fertilizer.



Lets take example of Trichoderma. It can act in multiple ways too.

  • Trichoderma is known to eat-out available food at very high speed so that other fungi do not get chance to grow in same premises. 
  • It releases numerous antibiotics and antibiotic-like substances in soil. These substances accumulate at high concentration in premises. Due to this, many other micro-organisms fail to grow.
  • It is known to enter in filaments of other fungi and eat-out them from inside. It is something like predators!
  • It is known to produce substances that enhance the immunity of plant. Something like polio vaccine.
  • They are known to dwell inside plant without harming them. Here they are known to enhance uptake of nutrients by plants. This is something like our mother cooks tasty food and we eat double!
Based on these points, it is clear that it is not possible to label Trichoderma as fertilizers, pesticides or plant-growth promoters.

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