The original idea of the visit was to obtain data on plant diseases and the common disease preventive measures and the types of chemical fertilizers used in industry. However, the team received far more insights from this visit which led to a change in the main focus of the project.
We found that most farmers use pesticides and fungicides for curative purposes rather than preventive purposes. There is no organic weedicide available. Various different companies such as Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), Krishak Bharti Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO) supply fertilizers to farmers via Taluka Sangha (County Council). Because of degrading quality and fertility of soil due to overuse of chemical fertilizers such as NPK, Superphosphate, Urea etc, these companies are being forced by the government to sell biofertilizers along with chemical ones on mandatory basis (Quote by Mr Jambhulkar, representative of IFFCO for Satara District).
This information strengthened our idea because we had a realization that the Indian farmer is not new to the use of live cultures of microbes in field.

For second field visit, team had discussions with Mrs Anjali Jadhav. She is a proud owner of a huge field in Nashik district of the state of Maharashtra, hosting mangoes (300 trees), chikoo (sapodilla) fruits (300-350 trees), amla (Indian gooseberry) fruits (50 trees), wheat, corn and legumes.
This interview was more focused on the ways that are implemented to tackle the growth of weeds in the field and to receive feedback on our project. Mrs Jadhav is ardent supporter of organic farming. But because of lack of any organic weedicide, even such farmers have to resort on manual uprooting of weeds or spray harmful weedicides in extreme conditions.
As our engineered microbe can inherently distinguish between the crop of interest and the weed, the assimilation of phosphorous in rhizosphere of weeds is automatically shunted. Mrs Jadhav was extremely enthusiastic about our idea as this project highly resembles with her ideology of organic farming. But at the same time she was sceptical about the usefulness and safety of newly developed, genetically modified bacteria. This led us to think about regulations on the use of GMOs in India.

On-field discussion

The team had a brief discussion with Mrs. Jadhav with the aim of learning about the harmful effects of synthetic fertilizers on the labour force that come in direct contact with these. She also explained which precautionary measures need to be taken while spraying these fertilizers.

The team visited a small village known as Ale in the district of Pune in Maharashtra state. The aim was to talk to farmers harvesting various different classes of crops and understand the economics of farming on various levels.
According to most of the farmers, fertilizers are the most expensive utility for a particular cycle of farming. Approximately 50-55% of the capital is used up in chemical fertilizers. Farmers are reluctant to use organic fertilizers because of their low yields. This whole debacle of economics is exacerbated by the extreme uncertainty in the prices of vegetables, fruits and other agricultural products in the Indian markets.
The conclusion was, if the capital that is spent in fertilizers is reduced somehow, the volatility in the product prices won’t affect the overall profitability of farmers’ venture. The use of self-sustainable living bacteria for plant nutrition will certainly help in that regard.

Spraying of pesticides

The team reviewed the technique of spraying pesticides and weedicides on the plants. Spraying requires a lot of attention and can result in plethora of side-effects. Spraying of weedicide on crop branch renders that branch unproductive. Hence, spraying requires a lot of care and precaution as demonstrated in the video.

Talk with Experts

While strengthening the base for our project, these visits and interviews put forth many new questions such as economics and regulations. As our idea of use of amplification circuit to increase the efficiency of assimilation of organic phosphorous leads into the realm of biofertilizers, the team decided to get in touch with MiGrow Agro Products, a manufacturer of biofertilizers in India. Also, keeping in mind that the release of any genetically engineered machine is completely against iGEM’s policy, we were certainly intrigued about the regulations, present in India, on the release of GMOs.

Another such interview with Mrs. Poornima Savargaonkar improved our knowledge about effects of overuse of fertilizers and how microbial cultures help provide nutrition to the plants in an efficient manner. According to Mrs. Savargaonkar, use of fertilizers such as urea increases the soil temperature leading to the decrease in microbial culture and increase in the density of robust harmful micro-organisms. This in fact leads to more and more diseases. On the other hand, combination of microbial flora in the soil is actually beneficial for the plants's growth and disease resistance ability. This interaction provided an impetus to our cause of providing specific nutrition using micro-organisms.