Optimizing phosphorus fertilization for wheat

What is it about?

In the future years, the global demand for crops is predicted to rise. This demand will largely come from areas of the world with poor growing environments and infertile soils. Phosphorus is one of the indispensable nutrients for crops production. Phosphorus fertilizers are one of the more expensive inputs required for crop production and to improve crop growth. In addition, in the soil P can easily be fixed due to its low use efficiency of most crops with only 10 to 25%. In southern Algeria, the practice of agriculture is not possible without the improvement of soil quality and chemical fertility through fertilization and amendments which rest the only solution in order to establish an acceptable agricultural production in these areas, in which farmers rely largely on inputs such as fertilizers to address soil fertility problems and improve crop production. At the present time, phosphorus fertilization in the Saharan soils rich in calcareous stay not well-regulated and the aim of Algerian agriculture is to reduce inputs without reducing yield and quality. For this reason, it is urgent to make evolve the management of all agricultural practices including the fertilization to durable practices, integrating better the ecological processes, and supporting at the same time a high-quality production and the maintenance of soil productivity on the long term. Our results suggest that a condition where P is currently deficient, in a scenario of calcareous soils, the availability of P from minerals fertilizers, P absorption and use efficiency should be improved.

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Photo by Nikolett Harmat on Unsplash

Photo by Nikolett Harmat on Unsplash