Better Fertilizer Decisions for Crops

The grain industry and fertilizer industry are seeking a better understanding of nutrient response to enable better fertilizer recommendations to be made. The national program entitled “Making Better Fertiliser Decisions for Cropping Systems in Australia”, or BFDC, will provide the first accessible online repository of searchable trials. The project will publish key regional and national responsiveness curves, but will also provide users with the opportunity to interrogate the database and compare crops, soils, seasons or farming systems. Importantly, the project enables us to establish and consolidate national and regional standards for soil test critical levels for N, P, K, and S. This will enable organizations to update and/or verify decision support systems (DSS) and result in improved understanding of soil tests and consistent interpretation of results. In turn, that will result in better directed research as future trials are targeted at knowledge gaps. Ultimately this means better DSS for organizations, more reliance on soil testing by growers, better fertilizer use efficiency, and greater accountability for fertilizer recommendations.

So far, 1,300 crop nutrient response trials for N, P, K, and S in cereals, oilseeds, and pulses have been added to the national BFDC database. The majority of these trials are for wheat, but there are also large amounts of data across Australia for barley, canola, and lupins. Approximately 4,000 trials will be held in the database by the end of March 2011. These data will represent all available trials conducted in Australia since the 1960s. The BFDC Interrogator has been developed as a web-based tool that can select data sets from the database and fit response curves to those set. It is currently being finalized to enable users to query the database using nutrient specific criteria. The Interrogator will be road tested by the project team and released for use by approved users in 2012. For more information, visit this URL: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/info/BFDC. ANZ-09