Despite concerns about the ability of China to be self-sufficient in food, it has increased the per capita availability of food for its 1.4 billion people and dramatically reduced food insecurity over the past decades.However, China”s self-sufficiency in food production came with dramatic environmental trade-offs due to excessive use of fertilizers.In response, the government of China imposed a policy of zero growth in the use of chemical fertilizers by 2020, with a challenge to the agricultural and fertilizer community to improve the nutrient use efficiency (NUE) of crops.These objectives have to be met while still ensuring food and nutrition security, and sustaining ecosystem health.In this paper we make a case for revisiting the functioning of fertilizers, in order to achieve a more effective and multifaceted impact on ecology and society.This leads to the notion of adopting a range of strategies with the potential for addressing the low NUE.These include identification of currently most effective fertilizer products and improved nutrient management practices for the immediate term, while designing innovative fertilizers based on plant nutrient physiology, developing ”smart” fertilizers that recognize plant cues, deploying bio-nano-technology, and fortifying basic fertilizers with micronutrients.
Revisiting fertilizer functioning Appropriate and innovative fertilizers Micronutrients Bio-nano-technology Nutrient use efficiency
Prem S.Bindraban Marco Ferroni Dominik Klauser Christian Dimkpa John Wendt Yam Gaihre Kalimuthu Senthilkumar Deborah Bossio Zhang Weifeng Bas Kempen Satish Chander Renu Pandey Jason White Bonnie McClafferty Scott Angle
Virtual Fertilizer Research Center(VFRC)of the IFDC,Washington,D.C.,20006 USA Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture(SFSA),Basel,Switzerland International Fertilizer Development Center(IFDC),Muscle Shoals,35662 USA Africa Rice Center(AfricaRice),01 BP 4029,Abidjan 01,C(o)te d”Ivoire International Center for Tropical Agriculture(CIAT),Cali,Colombia China Agricultural University,Beijing ,China ISRIC-World Soil Information,Wageningen ,the Netherlands The Fertilizer Association of India(FAI),New Delhi,India Indian Agricultural Research Institute(IARI),New Delhi,India Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station,New Haven,CT,USA The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition(GAIN),Washington,D.C.,20005 USA