Justus von Liebig in the middle and late 19th century 'invented' organic chemistry on your statement. The issue now is sustainaibility how much money and energy fertilizer cost, and how much is dispersed in rainfall and drainage. Soil organic structure is lost and the issues were well known even at Liebig times from Virginia colonization. Cotton and grain  with inorganic munure were leaving deserts. As far quality it is more subjective but minor elements may play a role. You may see Dr Ronald Korcak report http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/2/2/263.full.pd

Organic agriculture is a holistic approach and more than a comparison at the amendment level. But let's take your example in consideration: the plant will not recognize nitrate from chemical fertilizer and organic amendment (manure or other), but living microorganisms in the soil will do. One of the pillar of organic agriculture is the following: feed the soil to feed the plant. So, when you feed the soil with a chemical fertilizer, you decrease the effectiveness of the soil fauna and decrease the synergistic effect that this fauna could help the crops. You can find hundreds of papers on PGPR that are extracted from compost and organic soils. Mycorhizea is also a synergistic microorganism that helps the crops (perennials) a lot. In fact, allowed fertilizers and amendment are not considered as a source of nutrient to the crops, but are considered for their biological, chemical, and structural role, they are also a feed for soil micro, meso and macro fauna. Organic amendments have positive impact on water retention, increasing CEC, synergistic effect, slow and sustainable release of nutrient, improved soil aggregate stability...Holistic approach of organic agriculture is based on the production of food in an agro-ecosystem which is agronomically feasible, environmentally sound , socially acceptable and economically viable.

Concerning the effect on the organic food, please see the attached file

You are right, that plant will take the nutrients in inorganic form only, then what makes the difference. If one can apply the inorganic / chemical fertilizers, we are focussing on the particular nutrient like N, P K etc. For the quality of product, other nutrients even required in less amount is very much essential. Basically, we are not taking care of that one very seriously. But if we apply the organic sources of nutrients  it can provides other nutrients also in a single goal because after mineralization they will release that one. plant get benefited and quality will improved. Besides these, it also improves the microbial diversity in soil which produces different beneficial substances that might help in quality improvement.

Hi Sunil,

1. Your definition of 'organically' grown crop is a little bit off from the real definition of organically grown crop. It is not decided based on whether 'organic' or 'inorganic' form of nutrients are used by the plants.

2. What is organic Agriculture?  According to USDA (US Department of Agriculture), organic agriculture produces products using methods that preserve the environment and avoid most synthetic materials, such as pesticides and antibiotics.[ http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=organic-agriculture ]

3. "USDA organic standards" describes how farmers grow crops and raise livestock and which materials they may use. Organic farmers, ranchers, and food processors follow a defined set of standards to produce organic food and fiber.

4. "USDA organic standards: [ http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/NOPOrganicStandards ]

For organic crops. The USDA organic seal (see attached picture) on the crop products verifies that irradiation, sewage sludge, synthetic fertilizers, prohibited pesticides, and genetically modified organisms (GMO) WERE NOT used during the growth of the crops. So, you can see: growing organic crops includes many restrictions, not only the fertilizer type applied to the plants.

Hi Dr. Sunil. I hope this paper can help your query on organic crop's quality. (Arvin Paul Tuaño, Zhimin Xu, Michelle B. Castillo, Cezar P. Mamaril, Rosaly V. Manaois, Marissa V. Romero, Bienvenido O. Juliano. 2011. The Philippine Agricultural Scientist. 94(2):211-216.)

It depends on your point view and which side you are on (in favour or against organic agriculture). 

As previously said , organic agriculture is a holistic approach and doesn't concern only for the final product but for the agrosystems also. Therefore, you have to consider keeping the balance within the agrosystems. As for the quality of the products and the environmental impact, the results are contradictory and there are many issues in scientific approach (sampling methods, harvesting stage, cultivation medium, duration of experiments etc.). One sure thing is that organic products, especially leafy vegetables have far less nitrates than conventional ones, but for most of the other quality features you will see that results are contradictory.

My personal opinion (and experience) is that if you don't use the means you have (fertilizers, agrochemicals etc.) in excess and  practise sustainable farming, the products you get are of equal quality with minimum impact on environment.  

You may check if the attached article on medicinal and aromatic plants will be of any help. 

Dear all

In organic agriculture for sustaining environment we use organic materials like animal  manure, green manure, humic compounds, sea weed extracts, composts, vermicompost, different kinds of microorganisms etc. It means we have different source for organic agriculture. I think most of the above mentioned organic compounds are OK. But for using microorganisms especially bacteria forms I am in doubt. I am not against organic agriculture. I know beneficial effect of microorganisms in soils and rhizospher. I know also PGPR,s improve plant growth. But one question remain. I have seen many papers about  pseudomonas , Herbaspirilum, Bacillus species that says these bacteria are not a safe bacteria for human health. They say Herbaspirilum species make lung disease or pseudomonas species make blood disease. Soil scientists says these are rhizospher bacteria and live in soils but unfortunately these bacteria move up and spread in fruits and the plant parts that we eat them. If we use these bacteria in ornamental plants it may be not important but in food crops it is dangerous. Coming back to the question ,How you want improve quality of the crops with these organic tools! I have talked with different colleagues about these bacteria. They say the species of bacteria are important and we have to be aware of them when we use them. For example they believe P.florecences or P.putida are the safe species among pseudomonas spicies. I myself have seen many medicinal papers that report these two species make ill human and remain live in human temperature. Please excuse me all for my long answer. 

Good luck

thank you

I agree with Barbara, although the nutrient contents are still under debate (see next paragraph, http://ofrf.org/organic-faqs), the immediate benefit of using organically-grown foods are that they are free of pesticides, herbicides and other artificial additives, which may cause harm to human who consume them. Same thing goes for the organic meat and milk, etc. They are free of 'artificial hormone' and 'antibiotics' etc.

Read on.....[http://ofrf.org/organic-faqs]

"Is organic food more nutritious than conventional food?

The definitive study has not been done, mainly because of the multitude of variables involved in making a fair comparison between organically grown and conventionally grown food. These include crop variety, time after harvest, post-harvest handling, and even soil type and climate, which can have significant effects on nutritional quality. However, a 2002 report indicates that organic food is far less likely to contain pesticide residues than conventional food (13% of organic produce samples vs. 71% of conventional produce samples contained a pesticide residue, when long-banned persistent pesticides were excluded). For more information on this 2002 report (Baker, B.P., C.M. Benbrook, E. Groth III, and K.L. Benbrook. 2002. Pesticide residues in conventional, integrated pest management (IPM)-grown and organic food: insights from three US data sets. Food Additives and Contaminants 19:427-446.) go to the Organic Materials Review Institute website www.omri.org."

Dear Sunil

I am attaching an interesting research article on wheat with the hope it is useful to you.

Keeping aside the arguments and counter arguments, let me narrate my personal family experience. My grand mother and great grand mother used to mock at me when I was a student of agriculture humorously telling me that the food (cooked rice), curries (vegetables), chutnies and other dishes lost their flavor/taste which they used to have in their childhood! due to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They told me even the taste of water in the wells in the vicinity of the fields in the village has changed drastically. Though they agreed that the size of the vegetables and the crop yields have increased many-fold. I think this is the experience of many persons.

The best option to balance the quality and quantity is to judiciously use both organic and inorganic sources of nutrients as we need to increase crop productivity and production from a limited area and resources to feed the burgeoning population.

Good luck.

Dear Dr. Sunil

I am attaching 2 more articles for your information.

Good luck.

Dear Sunil,

For some basic insights you may kindly have a look at this link:

https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/96937/Organic_Agriculture.pdf

https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/10593/PDF

http://www.columbia.edu/~mu2126/publications_files/Uriarte%20et%20al%20AGEE%202009.pdf

Regards

Krishna

 @ Krishna Kumar Yadav,

There are different views about this topic.

From my personal experience, I feel that some organic fruits have better flavor than those non-organic. The eggs are also different between those from organic, grass-fed chickens and those from non-ranch-free, and grain-fed chickens. The colors of the yolks are obviously different (see attachment).

Please take a look at this interesting link and a pdf file. You may find answers there.

Khalid

http://research.ncl.ac.uk/nefg/QOF/page.php?page=1

https://shop.fibl.org/fileadmin/documents/shop/1413-organic-products.pdf