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

“农业依赖于土壤养分（主要是氮、磷和钾）来优化植物发育和最终产量。土壤自然含有这些营养素，但作物的生长和收获导致营养素耗尽，导致植物营养缺乏和产量下降。因此，替代土壤中的自然养分供应，使作物能够持续种植，对粮食安全和高效作物生产至关重要。这些营养素可以从多种来源添加-有机物质，化肥和某些植物（传统上通过轮作进行）-确保土壤健康和肥力的维持，使营养和健康的作物持续高产生长。化肥是向土壤提供养分的最有效方式，具有最高的成本效益。我们的整个农业系统都依赖于以某种形式施用化肥;没有化肥，就不可能将世界人口维持在目前的水平。尤其是氮，对农民和粮食生产至关重要，因为氮是限制作物发育和产量的最重要的营养素，也是作物生产的最大成本。然而，氮很少得到有效管理;每年有1.1亿吨氮被施入农田，但其中只有约四分之一进入植物，部分原因是作物的氮利用效率低下。过量施用化肥导致过量的氮渗入水道，估计每年约有8 000万吨氮流入世界水道。氮肥的普遍过量使用以及在较小程度上其他营养物质如磷酸盐和钾的过度使用，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的氧气而死亡。它还促进微生物的脱氮作用，导致一氧化二氮（一种强效温室气体）释放到大气中。生产无机肥料亦需要大量能源，进一步增加温室气体排放和化石燃料消耗。本项目旨在开发一种决策工具，使农民能够更好地优化作物施肥量，减少使用和增加植物吸收养分的百分比，从而导致氮的减少（以及磷酸盐和钾）被释放到环境中。"

"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."