Exploiting the Benefits of Mixed Cropping and Crop Rotation Using Biotechnology for Sustainable Agriculture

In the mid era use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals was increased by farmers inappropriately for increasing the productivity to fulfill the food requirement of large population. This led to decreasing the quality and productivity of soil and affects other natural resources such as water. As per the present scenario of farming, selective production of staple crops results in more productivity but with less nutritional quality. This is affecting the farmers economically because the new generation is more concerned about the quality food. Therefore, there is a need to give more emphasis on to increase the nutritional quality along with higher yield of crops. In past years, some mixed cropping patterns were followed in different regions according to their traditional crops, climatic zone and soil and water conditions. But now days because of the preference of some particular food by consumers, farmers are not following their traditional cultivation system which includes the cultivation of different crops at same time in same field followed by crop rotation. These mixed cropping systems including crop rotation have great importance not only from productivity point of view but also from quality point of view and also do not require additional fertilizers for crop development. Further, addition of fertilizers is not needed because the remaining of previously harvested crop being processed by soil micro-biota is used as organic fertilizers. As these cultivation patterns do not require the addition of chemical fertilizers, they have great significance for healthy environment. By studying the benefits of such cropping system and exploiting this knowledge with the integration of molecular biology and biotechnology one can improve the quantity of crop yield along with nutritional quality so that value added products can be facilitated to the consumers as per their requirements.