3. Quality Management

Quality management is very important process, and must be performed repeatedly to monitor the microbial products in favor of the customers.

The current guidelines used for evaluating quality of biofertilizers are restricted to controlling the: density of the available microorganisms, their viability and preservation. However, it is also important to set control points that do not contain available microorganisms, but are focused on the consistency of the other compositions in the final microbial products. Also it is highly desirable that the biofertilizer demonstrates the major effects for quality management of the final biofertilizer products. It is a crucial requirement to discriminate between the role of the available microorganisms and the supplementary compositions on the effects of the biofertilizer guaranteed by the suppliers. If the final results of the two experimental schemes (microorganisms / supplements) are the same or cannot be confirmed statistically, then the product is only an organic matter. This means that the effects of microbial products should resulted from the activity of the guaranteed microorganisms, and the target of the substances should be presented in details as a prescription. It is important to assess precisely the functions under the given usage manifested by the end-user (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Procedure of biofertilizer quality control.

Biofertilizers, being microbial products, supply soil with nutrients, diminish the agricultural burden and conserve the environment. Good soil condition is imperative to improve crop yields, as well as to assure human and/or animal health welfare. That’s why, the materials, as biofertilizers, used to sustain good soil condition, are treated as environmental matters. However, as mentioned earlier, there are still some problems to be met on the use of microbial products. More accurate quality control must be performed in favor of the customers. With this in mind, the need to develop better production techniques and to improve the management system for microbial products is defined.

Although the effects of biofertilizers vary in different geographical regions due to the peculiarities in climate and soil conditions, the importance of biofertilizer on environmental preservation in the 21^st century must not be ignored. In the same time, development of various biotechnological approaches should be considered in order to increase the biofertilizer effects with concern for the environment.