The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has set up the world’s biggest facility for producing mycorrhizae.
The facility will explore the potential in developing mycorrhizae as a viable alternative to current agro-chemicals and can play a vital role in sustainable agriculture.
The Centre for Mycorrhizal Research at TERI has successfully translated the nutrient tapping potential of mycorrhizae and developed a technology that eventually produces mycorrhizae based biofertilizer.
The TERI facility has a production capacity of over 600 billion propagules/annum, expandable to 1000 Billion propagules/annum in next two years. The production capacity of this facility can potentially benefit 1.2 million hectare or more of farmland.
The facility is spread over 414 m[2]Â of floor area fully dedicated for production activities, and covers class 10000 and 1000 cleanroom areas with temperature and relative humidity controlled environment.
Mycorrhizal concentrate with a QC data on colonization in plants under green house of various Mycorrhizal species will be available from this facility to various manufacturers worldwide for manufacturing their own branded product.
Mycorrhizae increase the absorbing area of the roots 100 to 1000 times also make unavailable and other tightly bound soil essential nutrients available to the plants thereby facilitate the ability of the plants to utilize soil resources more efficiently.
In addition to their role of increasing absorption and translocation of nutrients from soil to plants, mycorrhiza also improve the tolerance of plants towards varied stresses (high soil temperature, drought, heavy metal toxicity, salinity etc.) and build up macro-porous structure of soil through their extraradical hyphae that allow penetration of water as well as air and prevents erosion.