Fertiliser on-farm decision tool: Optimising the use and reducing the environmental burden of fertigation

“农业依赖土壤养分（主要是氮、磷和钾）来优化植物发育并最终实现产量。土壤中自然含有这些营养物质，但种植和收获作物导致营养物质枯竭，导致植物营养缺乏，产量下降。因此，对粮食安全和有效的作物生产来说，至关重要的是取代土壤中自然供应的养分，使作物能够连续种植。这些营养物质可以从各种来源添加——有机物、化肥和某些植物（传统上通过轮作方式）——确保维持土壤健康和肥力，使营养和健康的作物持续生长，并获得高产。化肥是向土壤提供养分的最有效方式，成本效益最高。我们的整个农业系统依赖于以这样或那样的形式施用肥料；没有它，世界人口不可能维持在目前的水平。特别是氮对农民和粮食生产至关重要，它是限制作物发育和产量的最重要的养分，也是作物生产成本的最大贡献者。然而，这些氮很少得到有效管理；每年有1.1亿吨氮肥施用于农田，但其中只有约四分之一进入植物体内，部分原因是作物氮肥利用率低。过度施用化肥导致过量的氮肥渗入水道，据估计，每年大约有8千万吨氮肥流入世界水道。氮肥的普遍过度使用，以及磷酸盐和钾等其他营养物质在较小程度上的过度使用，导致水体富营养化和有毒藻类大量繁殖，导致水生生物因藻类耗尽水中氧气而死亡。它还促进微生物的反硝化作用，导致一氧化二氮（一种强效温室气体）释放到大气中。无机肥料的生产也需要大量的能源投入，这进一步导致了温室气体的排放和化石燃料的消耗。该项目旨在开发一种决策工具，使农民能够更好地优化施用于作物的肥料数量，减少使用并增加植物吸收养分的百分比，从而减少氮（以及磷酸盐和钾）释放到环境中。”

"Agriculture depends on soil nutrients (primarily nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) to optimise plant development and ultimately yield. Soils contain such nutrients naturally, but growing and harvesting crops results in nutrients becoming depleted, leading to plants suffering from nutrient deficiency and decreasing yields. It is therefore crucial for food security and efficient crop production to replace the natural supply of nutrients in the soil to enable the continuous cultivation of crops. These nutrients can be added from a variety of sources - organic matter, chemical fertilisers, and certain plants (as traditionally done by crop rotation) - ensuring maintenance of soil health and fertility, enabling continuous growth of nutritious and healthy crops at high yields. Chemical fertilisers are the most efficient way to supply nutrients to the soil and have the highest cost benefit. Our entire agricultural system depends on the application of fertiliser in one form or another; it would not be possible to maintain the world's population at its current level without it. Especially nitrogen is of prime importance for farmers and food production, as the most important nutrient limiting crop development and yield, and also contributing the largest cost to crop production.However, this nitrogen is rarely efficiently managed; 110 million tons of nitrogen is applied onto fields every year, but only about a quarter of this makes it into plants, partly due to the poor nitrogen use efficiency of crops. Over application of fertiliser results in leaching of this excess into watercourses, and approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen is estimated to flow into the world's waterways every year.General overuse of nitrogen fertiliser and to some lesser extent other nutrients such as phosphate and potassium, causes eutrophication and toxic algal blooms in water systems, leading to death of aquatic organisms from oxygen depletion in the water by the algae. It also promotes denitrification by microorganisms, leading to the release of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Production of inorganic fertilisers also requires a large input of energy which further contributes to greenhouse gas emission as well as fossil fuel depletion.This project aims to develop a decision tool that will enable farmers to better optimise the quantity of fertiliser applied to crops, lowering use and increasing the percentage of nutrients taken up by plants and therefore resulting in less nitrogen (and phosphate and potassium) being released into the environment."