Human being has always tried to set his own order in regulating every form of life on the earth. He viewed every natural resource from the point of his immediate benefit. He nurtured animals and plants that he found useful and destroyed or uncared the ones that he found not useful. In the process, he disturbed the balance of nature so much that now he realizes his folly for setting a wrong trend in transferring his legacy to his future generations. This realization is coming fast across the entire human race all over the world.

In agriculture, the greatest transformation came with the discovery of chemical fertilizers in early 1900s, which changed the whole concept of plant nutrition. The use of synthetically produced plant nutrients, principally nitrogen, phosphorous and potash became a practice and a slogan in crop production and they have undoubtedly contributed much to increasing our crop yields for over 50 years.

However, over reliance on chemical fertilizers has created many unforeseen environmental and economical problems all over the world including India. The developed countries realized their mistakes long back and mended their ways of improving crop productivity balancing the use of chemical fertilizers and products of organic wastes and their recycling to achieve maximum use efficiency and economy in use of every natural resource that goes in production of synthetic fertilizers and crop production.  However, developing countries including India are yet to take a serious note of this. Major concerns of long-term sustainability in crop production and productivity has taken a back seat.

A treadmill has set in for use of more and more fertilizers and this has now reduced crop productivity in relation to increased cost of cultivation.  Lands in many situations have degraded and lost their fertility, food and water contaminated and environment polluted. Human and environmental health all over the world is affected and managing it is very costly.

It is with this concern for developing agricultural practices and systems that can effectively address the immediate issue of introducing and element of sustainability in Indian Agriculture, that this Division has taken up as a challenge and as its mission.