Earlier, it was believed that continued and even increased use of fertilisers is essential for sustaining India's high yielding agriculture. Of late, it has been experienced that by increasing the doses of NPK through fertilisers, crop productivity cannot be sustained mainly due to decline in organic carbon content and depletion of soils nutrient reserves leading to multiple nutrients deficiencies, imbalanced use of nutrients and many more factors depending on location specific areas. This, indeed, is a major challenge to those who are concerned with agricultural development and fertiliser use in the country. The escalating prices of fertilisers and raw materials required for production of fertilisers in global market have made it necessary to search the alternatives sources giving due emphasis to renewable nutrient sources to ensure sustainable agricultural development in the country. Experience shows that the goal of sustainable agriculture can be achieved by technological manipulations blending the indigenous knowledge with modern technologies suited to specific agro-ecological regions. Integrated use of all the nutrient resources (fertilisers, organics, crop residues, biofertilisers, industrial wastes/byproducts etc.) would be essential and inevitable. At least 25% of the total nutrient needs of India can be managed with organic manures, crop residues, biofertilisers and industrial wastes. Apart from this, our focus should be on efficient land and water management coupled with responsible plant nutrient supply along with best management practices. Various components of land and water management suited to site-specific conditions need to be adopted to ensure India's food, nutrition and environmental security. This paper highlights the sustainable pathways towards greening India's "Green Revolution" for sustainable agricultural development. The salient findings of the "Soil Rejuvenation and Productivity Enhancement Project" recently initiated by the IFFCO have also been briefly elucidated in this paper.
