Some recently published scientific papers calculated the N-NUE index (Nitrogen-Nutrients Use Efficiency) for different open field crops. According to their results, about 70% of the nitrogen distributed to plants gets diluted and leeched in waters (surface waters or waterbeds) and even in air. This means that globally, for each percentage point of N-NUE ratio increase, about 1.000.000 Tons of Urea could be saved.

This topic is becoming more and more important, because of the attention paid to the preservation of water resources, and because of the need to reduce the cost of fertilization. The theme of fertilizer improvement to allow the reduction of the nutrients quantities distributed is therefore environmentally and economically very interesting.

For theese reasons the research works have to be performed in order to:

• reduce the quantities of nutrients spread on the field improving the quality and the quantity of the crops
  
• improve the nutrition efficency
• reduce the work needed to the distributution
• avoid negative feed-back as weds overgrow, pathologies, etc.

 

In the framework of a a sustainable plant nutrition, Landlab is involved with HAIFA -particularly HAIFA Northern Europe and HAIFA Israel- to identify fertilizers, periods and methods of application, ratio of nutrients and blends of fast release and control release fertilizers, in order to contribute to the reduction of nitrogen.

In theese years Landlab has performed several experimentations, obtaining very interesting results and improving the knowledge of this important topic, as for example: 

 

Maize: although not a target crop for high-value fertilizer, maize is a good model. Many trials performed at Landlab and in other European and North America countries have shown that is possible to reduce  by 30-40% the nitrogen input maintaining the production levels. To achieve this purpose it is important to strictly observe technical issues as to distribute fertilizers in strips, in deep and during the seed. These results show why it is interesting to study maize in order to collect datas useful fot high-value crops.