Phosphorus (P) is one of the six key elements in plant
nutrition
and effectively plays a vital role in all major metabolic activities.
It is an essential nutrient for plants linked to human food production.
Although abundantly present in both organic and inorganic forms in
soil, more than 40% of cultivated soils are commonly deficient in
P concentration. Then, the P inadequacy is a challenge to a sustainable
farming system to improve the food production for an increasing population.
It is expected that the whole world population will rise to 9 billion
by 2050 and, therefore, it is necessary at the same time for agricultural
strategies broadly to expand food production up to 80% to 90% by handling
the global dilemma which has affected the environment by climatic
changes. Furthermore, the phosphate rock annually produced about 5
million metric tons of phosphate fertilizers per year. About 9.5 Mt
of phosphorus enters human food through crops and animals such as
milk, egg, meat, and fish and is then utilized, and 3.5 Mt P is physically
consumed by the human population. Various new techniques and current
agricultural practices are said to be improving P-deficient environments,
which might help meet the food requirements of an increasing population.
However, 4.4% and 3.4% of the dry biomass of wheat and chickpea, respectively,
were increased under intercropping practices, which was higher than
that in the monocropping system. A wide range of studies showed that
green manure crops, especially legumes, improve the soil-available
P content of the soil. It is noted that inoculation of arbuscular
mycorrhizal fungi could decrease the recommended phosphate fertilizer
rate nearly 80%. Agricultural management techniques to improve soil
legacy P use by crops include maintaining soil pH by liming, crop
rotation, intercropping, planting cover crops, and the consumption
of modern fertilizers, in addition to the use of more efficient crop
varieties and inoculation with P-solubilizing microorganisms. Therefore,
exploring the residual phosphorus in the soil is imperative to reduce
the demand for industrial fertilizers while promoting long-term sustainability
on a global scale.