Unique Knowledge

Farmers around the world will tell you that fertilizers are an essential input for crops. Fertilizer is responsible for half of the world’s current food production and is considered an indispensable part of crop production. But the fact remains that the use of fertilizer has increased drastically in the last few decades. Globally, the amount of nitrogen use increased by more than 80% over the period 1980 to 2018 (FAO, 2021).  Yet, it has been widely reported that fertilizer nutrient use efficiency (NUE) by crops is low, ranging between 25% and 50% depending on the crop, environmental conditions, and management practices (Hofmann et al., 2020; Herrera et al., 2016). The NUE is the product of two main components: nutrient uptake efficiency and utilization efficiency. Nutrient uptake efficiency is the ability of plants to take up nutrients from the soil, while nutrient utilization efficiency describes the capability of plants to assimilate and remobilize nutrients within the plant. E...