Just as they do every year, farmers are planning on applying phosphorous (P) fertilizer to their fields for next year’s crop either before or during seeding. All farmers in general are familiar with phosphate fertilizers and their importance to a healthy, high-yielding crop. But fertilizers are much more complicated than just applying it to your fields. Issues like the rapidly rising P prices and limited quantity of rock phosphates can have significant effects on the amount of fertilizer you can apply. In this week’s edition of Growing Possibilities, we will try to address how important P is to your crops and how biologicals can make the most of your fertilizer investment the upcoming season.
Phosphorous is essential to plants throughout the growing season, and is especially important during early development. Good P nutrition can lead to earlier plant emergence, better early plant growth and earlier plant maturity (1). Phosphorous can be added to your soil in a variety of ways, with one of the most common methods used by growers being inorganic phosphate fertilizers. Inorganic fertilizers are created from rock phosphates that is mined and turned into the common end products. For example, dry products such as Monoammonium Phosphate (MAP) and Diammonium Phosphate (DAP), as well as liquid products such as super phosphoric acid, come from rock phosphates (2). But not all of your applied P fertilizer will remain in a plant available form. Phosphorous gets fixed in the soil by binding with minerals (like Ca, Fe, Al) in the soil, which creates phosphate deposits that are unusable by plants. This means a large portion of your applied P fertilizer will not be available for your plant’s uptake (3).
As we are all aware, fertilizer prices have been sky rocketing and fertilizer supply is becoming an issue as well, especially P fertilizers. In the US, MAP has gone up 74% and DAP has increased by 63% in the past year alone. Although it has not surpassed the crazy fertilizer prices from 2008, it is clear that farmers will need to be more resourceful in relation to fertilizer application for the coming year (4). An eco-friendly and cost-effective way to improve the efficiency of your fertilizer applications is to use P-solubilizing bacteria. P solubilizing bacteria break down the P deposits and liberate the phosphates from them. This creates plant-available forms of P (H2PO4– or HPO42-) and increases availability of P in the soil for your crops. These bacteria don’t just increase the P coming from your fertilizers. These unique bacteria also free up other phosphates naturally present in the soil or from leftover from previous fertilizer applications. Making these phosphates plant-available allows farmers to make the most of your fertilizer investments and soil P already in their fields (5). Application of XiteBio Yield+ product could be really worthwhile to increase your fertilizer use efficiency in the upcoming year.
References
1) https://www.canolacouncil.org/canola-encyclopedia/fertility/phosphorus/
3) The Efficient Use of Phosphorus in Agricultural Soils, The Fertilizer Association of Ireland in association with Teagasc, Technical Bulletin Series – No. 4, February 2019
4) https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2021/09/30/china-phosphate-fertilizer-export
5) Rowe, H., Withers, P.J.A., Baas, P. et al. Integrating legacy soil phosphorus into sustainable nutrient management strategies for future food, bioenergy and water security. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst 104, 393–412 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-015-9726-1