Slow and control release fertilizer use was pushed in China

It was reported that the Ministry of Agriculture of China will greatly push the development of slow and control release fertilizer (SCRF) as one of the key and new technology since 2011. The demonstration activities for SCRF will increase from 5 provinces with 6 crops in 2008 to 23 provinces with 25 crops in 2011.

As one of the new type fertilizers, SCRF showed its advantage on high use efficiency, low energy consume and environment sound. The demonstration result from recent years indicated that SCRF use can reduce N fertilizer 10-30% while kept crop yield in same level and/or increased yield and economic benefit about 10%. At the same time, it significantly reduced labor input and the risk of N loss from farmland.

At present, China annually produced one million t of SCRF, it was about half of the world’s total production. But compare with other types of fertilizers, SCRF only occupied less than 1% of China’s fertilizer market. Therefore, it has long way to go to become one of the major commercial fertilizers in the country.