Abstract:
Some microbes and fauna (particularly insects) act as natural forest structuring (stratifying) and
diversifying organisms or forest creating engineers. Removal of plants during the forest conversion to
agriculture and subsequent practices such as tillage and the use of chemical inputs in crop cultivation
create stress factors for all living organisms, thus reducing biodiversity of functional flora, fauna and
microbes. Here, most of the disappeared biodiversity as a response to the stress factors enter into an
inactive or dormant phase to bypass the unfavorable conditions, by forming 'seeds', which are stored in
soil seed bank. It has been proven that surface-attached microbial communities known as biofilms secrete
a wider range of environmentally important compounds than mono or mixed cultures of the same
microbes. Some of those compounds break dormancy of the soil seed bank, thus re-establishing the lost
biodiversity relatively short term for reinstating ecosystem sustainability. Biofilm based biofertilizers
called biofilmed biofertilizers (BFBFs), which also can reinstate ecosystem sustainability, also render
numerous biochemical and physiological benefits to plant growth, and improve soil quality, thus leading
to a reduction of chemical fertilizer (CF) NPK use by 50% in various crops. This reduction has not been
achieved by conventional biofertilizers so far. Thus, the concept of BFBFs is not only biofertilization, but
also a holistic ecosystem approach. These formulations should therefore be considered as biofilmed
microbial ameliorators (BMAs), rather than the BFBFs. If this agronomic practice could be adopted in the
future, it would lead to a more eco-friendly agriculture with an array of benefits to health, economics and
the environment.