Question

Role of pulses as fertilisers in detail

Answer 1

To feed a growing population, farmers have to provide their crops with the right nutrients. Nitrogen is the nutrient most needed in crop production, and the main input to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas, a fossil fuel. Yet pulses are among the small group of food crops that draw their own nitrogen from the air we breathe. Pulses are able to do this through a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing soil bacteria that live inside their root systems. Instead of using fossil fuels to power the creation of fertilizer, pulses use solar energy to power a biological process that provides nearly all the nitrogen required for their growth. Pulses also improve the fertility of the soil, reducing the nitrogen fertilizer requirement of other crops grown in rotation, like wheat. So pulses not only use half the non-renewable energy of other crops, they also reduce the use of fossil fuels of an entire crop rotation.