1 TROPICAL BIORESOURCES TO SUPPORT BIOFERTILIZER INDUSTRY AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE IN INDONESIA 1 Tualar Simarmata Department of Soil Sciences, Agriculture Faculty of Padjadjaran University Bandung Indonesia. (tualar_simarmata@unpad.ac.id and Tualarsimarmata@yahoo.com) ABSTRACT The use of inorganic fertilizers is increasing continually to boost and to meet the plant nutrients requirement of intensive farming system in Indonesia. Intensive and heavy use of inorganic fertilizer and agrochemical has increased not only the agriculture productivity significantly, but also gave significantly impact on environmental pollution and degradation of soil quality and soil health. Most of agricultural soils either wetland or dry land ecosystems in Indonesia have been degraded and exhausted due to intensive agricultural practices and over exploitation. The latest date revealed that about 70% of paddy soils has a low organic carbon (less than 1.5%) and about 90% of dry land has belong to sick soils (low organic carbon and high acidity). Intensive farming practices have virtually mined nutrients from the soil. Moreover the price of chemical fertilizer is become more expensive and increases continually following the energy price. Bio-resources can be used to increase the nutrient availability to meet the plant nutrient requirements in sustainable ways which is known as “biofertilizer”. Biofertilizer is natural and low cost fertilizers which is containing a large population of specific or a group of beneficial microorganisms for enhancing the productivity of soil either by fixing atmospheric nitrogen or by solubilizing soil phosphorus or by stimulating plant growth through synthesis of growth promoting substances or latent cells that activate the biological process render to form a fertilizer compound or make the unavailable form of elements to be available or to facilitate nutrients availability for plants. Highly selected isolate of microbe as tropical bio-resources to support the biofertilizers and organic fertilizers industry are available either in single or consortia formulation to accelerate the adoption sustainable eco-friendly agriculture Various study revealed that the application of biofertlizers can increase the crops yield (food crop, vegetable crops and tree crops) significantly and reduce the application of inorganic fertilizers by at least 25 – 50 % for nitrogen and about 25 % for phosphor nutrient. In addition, biofertilizers can improve soil health and provide protection against drought and some soil borne diseases. Key words : bioresources, biofertilizers, sustainable, soil health, land degradation 1 Invited and presented Paper for International Seminar on Tropical Bio-resources for Sustainable Bioindustry 2013; from Basic Research to Industry, 30 – 31 st October 2013 in West and East Hall – ITB-Bandung-Indonesia