Why is nutrient use efficiency important? 

Improve nutrient use efficiency for optimal yields 

Making the most out of crop nutrition, and producing more food with less inputs, is the major challenge facing UK farmers over the next decade.  

Increasingly, farmers will need to focus on making the most efficient use of nutrients for both arable and grassland production. This means ensuring crops have an adequate supply of all the nutrients they need that are essential to optimise yields.  

All essential nutrients are needed 

Liebig’s law of the minimum dictates that the yield of plants is not dictated by the total resources available, but by the scarcest one. Inadequate supplies of any single nutrient can result in plants being unable to properly utilise others that are in adequate supply and this emphasises the importance of regular soil testing.   

Save more, waste less 

Efficient nutrient use brings the benefits of improved crop yield and quality and reduces the risk of losing nutrients through leaching or gaseous emissions, and importantly will reduce annual fertiliser bills.  

Prolonged release of nutrients 

Applications of ICL’s Polysulphate based products will supply essential nutrients over a prolonged period of time – 50 days on average. Plants have more opportunity to take up available nutrients available and less are wasted. Polysulphate, which contains 48% SO3, 14% K2O, 6% MgO and 17% CaO all in a sulphate form, can be applied as a straight fertiliser or be incorporated into an autumn programme. 

Trials show 28% increase in nitrogen uptake 

In trials, conducted in 2020/21 on winter barley, an application of 100 kg/ha of Polysulphate resulted in a 28% increase in nitrogen uptake by the crops and a 41% increase in phosphate too. This represents a significant increase in the efficiency use for all key elements during the autumn period.  

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