Rhizosphere Processes and Management for Improving Nutrient Use Efficiency and Crop Productivity

High input, high output, low nutrient resource use efficiency and deteriorating environmental problems reflect the typical characteristics of intensive farming system in China. How to achieve synchronously high nutrient use efficiency as well as high crop productivity has become a great challenge in the intensive agriculture of China. In the past two decades, crop production has not proportionally been increased with increasing input of chemical fertilizers, leading to low nutrient use efficiency and increasing environmental problems. Traditional nutrient management strategy was highly dependent on external chemical fertilizer input, but ignored exploring biological potential of efficient acquisition and use of soil nutrient resources by plants intrinsically. Rhizosphere is the key centre of interactions among plants, soils and microorganisms; the chemical and biological processes occurring in the rhizosphere not only determine mobilization and acquisition of soil nutrients, but also control nutrient use efficiency by crops. The rhizosphere management strategy lays emphasis on maximizing the efficiency of root and rhizosphere processes in nutrient acquisition towards high-yield and high-efficiency sustainable crop production by optimizing nutrient supply in root zone, regulating root morphological and physiological traits, and manipulating rhizosphere processes and interactions. The strategies of rhizosphere management are proved to be an effective approach to increasing nutrient use efficiency and crop productivity towards sustainable crop production for main crops in China.