Recent advances on organic biofertilizer production from anaerobic fermentation of food waste: Overview

Massive utilizations of chemical fertilizer in agriculture sector to improve the farming productivity have created increasing possibility of environmental damages. Severe human health issues, global warming, poor fertility and high cost of soil maintenance are the major side effects of the utilizations of inorganic fertilizers and needs immediate attention. To overcome these issues, agriculture farming has been shifted towards the development of organic fertilizers using natural bio-resources. Organic fertilizers have several advantages like low-cost, being produced from the renewable resources and are highly efficient to improve the productivity of soil and agriculture product, rapidly. Additionally, bio-fertilizers not only increase the production, nutrients and organic matter but also neutralize the harmful impacts caused by the chemical fertilizers due to the potential combination of the microorganisms with organic wastes. Food wastes have tremendous potential to enhance the production of bio-fertilizers because these wastes are present in bio-degradable forms and may efficiently accelerate the activity of the microbial metabolic. Thus, the present review summarizes an overview of the production strategy of bio-fertilizers using the combination of food wastes and microorganisms. Further, in depth discussion have been done about the microbial digestion of food wastes to produce biofertilizer along with discussions about the possible mechanisms involved therein. Plant growth promoting microorganisms and their mechanisms have been also analyzed in the present review along with the existing limitations and sustainable future prospective.