Potassium, an integral part for sustained soil fertility and efficient crop production
Abstract
Demographic processes due to fast growth of the global population and urbanization are the main reason for increasing demands for food and feed. Due to urbanization processes about 50% of food is exported into towns. In consequence on a world scale about 83 million t NPK are also transferred into towns and hardly recycle to the land where they came from. In the last decade the global production of cereals, oilseed crops, sugar crops showed some specific trends, i.e. the sown area declined (cereals, sugar beets), but the production level has been almost constant due to higher yields per ha. It means higher nutrients removal from the field with the harvest. The increasing intensity of oilseed crops, root crops and sugar crops production requires, in turn, higher level of soil fertility due to relatively poor root systems when compared to cereals. However, the current fertilizer use patterns are much worse that at the end of the 80-ies. The consumption of fertilizers, generally decreased, but also the structure of NPK use underwent some negative changes. The special attention should be focused on the potassium consumption. The resulting NK ratio in global fertilizer use depreciated rapidly from a fairly balanced ratio of 1:0,4 to currently 1:0,27. This ratio dramatically worsened in the Central Europe countries, including Poland. It has been documented, through long-term experiments, that negative K balance results in a huge reduction in the content of soil K, causing its mining. On the other hand, numerous field trials give evidence that adequate use of potassium fertilizers, i.e. in balance with the other essential nutrients increases yield and improves its quality. It is important to many countries, like Poland, that adequate K fertilization also increases crops response to water deficits, increases resistance to diseases. There are some other benefits of balanced potassium use (i) environmental — higher efficiency of nitrogen (ii) economic — increasing farmer’s profits generates income, which is partly used for purchase of non-agricultural products; business attraction to the rural areas (iii) social — rural areas development, social security, etc.
Keywords:
K mining, nutrients balance, population growth, potassium, yieldReferences
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Authors
Adolf Kraussipi@ipipotash.org
International Potash Institute, Basel, Switzerland Switzerland
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