Excessive use of chemical fertilizers (CF) has led to degrade agroecosystems, and human and environmental health. In this context, maintaining soil quality has been challenging. As alternatives to CF, ecofriendly substitutes are being tested, but to a lesser extent. Amongst, Biofilm biofertilizers (BFBF) which improve soil and crop yields are being popularized among farmers. Thus far, there is no published research regarding the effect of BFBF on soil quality and crop production at large scale cultivations. Therefore, present study investigated this in lowland rice farming of Sri Lanka. The study was carried out in 54 farmer fields spreading over thousands of hectares in three districts representing major rice growing areas. In each location, two consecutive, uniform paddy fields were applied separately with farmers’ CF practice and the newly introduced BFBF practice. Root zone soil samples were collected and analyzed for 16 physico-chemical and microbial parameters, and grain yield was recorded at harvest. The results showed that the application of BFBF increased soil nutrient contents and microbial communities, and finally it led to increase grain yield over the CF alone practice. A significant relationship between a developed soil quality index (SQI) and grain yield only in the BFBF practice indicated that the soil has a major role to play only in ecofriendly rice cultivation. It is concluded from this study that the CF alone application would not be sufficient to break yield barrier for which the reinstated microbial action of BFBF is a must.

Research and Development work on Commercial Agriculture (CA) has not sufficiently been taken into account of those transformations occurring in the country’s socio-economic and political environment, especially in the lens of decision-making and adoption of eco-friendly technologies in CA. It has been debated for a long time that well-set strategic policies and guidelines incorporated and agreed upon by all stakeholders into a model possess a vast potential to facilitate such decision-making towards the establishment of an eco-friendly CA. In the light of that, an illustrative model was built of which the logical paths were characterized by the variables stand for Key Performance Drives (KPD) to exhibit the state of societal acceptance of the research outputs on the concept of ‘Research for Society’ within the realm of functional flexibility of research institutes. The outputs and outcomes from such an exploratory analysis would facilitate research institutes working on CA to systematically adopt the ‘best-fit KPDs’ in research development and researches to be conceived from societal roots. Further, it would establish the true connections and dependencies between research, social awareness of research needs, and flexibility of research institutes to enhance the performance of the sector, through collected data on Key Performance Indicators (KPI).