The Enigma of Fertilizer Phosphorus Utilization

Abstract

The need for a sustainable use of the limited resource phosphorus in agriculture is generally acknowledged though scarcity is no pressing topic. There is no doubt that phosphorus losses from agricultural soils to the environment are a major contributor to eutrophication of water bodies. There is also no doubt that the excessive application of farmyard manure in the vicinity of big livestock enterprises yields an undesired accumulation of P in soils, while on numerous arable farms phosphorus mining can be observed. The premise for a sustainable P use in agriculture is a balanced P fertilization where inputs equal outputs. This chapter summarizes the chemical behavior of fertilizer-derived phosphorus in soils, and it presents a novel approach to assess the fertilizer phosphorus utilization completely and reliably as a tool to quantify the genuine phosphorus demand of agricultural crops.

Sulfur-Enriched Bone Char as Alternative P Fertilizer: Spectroscopic, Wet Chemical, and Yield Response Evaluation

“…In an efficient agronomic system, the P budgets should be around zero to avoid negative effects for the environment through fertilization [87]. The negative P budget (Formula (2)) of the P0 treatment of the pot experiment can be attributed to the mobilisation of P from soil (Figure 4), which was also reflected by the reduction of soil P CAL from 145 to 89 mg pot −1 from seeding to harvest.…”

Identification and Characterization of the Phosphate-Solubilizing Bacterium Pantoea sp. S32 in Reclamation Soil in Shanxi, China

“…Nevertheless, only 0.1% of P can be utilized by plants, rendering available P a restrictive factor for plant growth (Lambers and Plaxton, 2018). Phosphate anions in chemical fertilizer available to plants are extremely reactive and become fixed through interactions with Ca 2+ , Fe 3+ , and Al 3+ ions in the soil to form insoluble phosphate salt complexes; however, the plant utilization efficiency for P in chemical fertilizers is only 5–25% (Schnug and Haneklaus, 2016), leading to P enrichment in the soil and the loss of soil fertility. These realities make increasing the P utilization rate for plant growth an urgently needing situation.…”

Enhancement of Releasing Phosphorus from Bone Char in Calcareous Sandy Soil Under Applying Different Levels of Water Salinity

“…Phosphate fertilizer applications cause accumulation of heavy metals and radionuclides in soils, which leads ecosystems to collapse in the long term (Khan et al 2018;Gupta et al 2014). Additionally, lots of the P added to the soil are fixed via precipitation and sorption processes; this in turn represents an economic loss (Schnug and Haneklaus 2016). Sustainable agriculture is to integrate all components of the ecosystem balancing the requirements of current and future populations.…”