Better Fertilizer Decisions for Crops

This project was established to improve current fertilizer recommendations by collaborating with national fertilizer industry, grains industry, state agencies, and agribusiness stakeholders. It aims to collate available and suitable N, P, K, and S crop response and soil test data for cereal, pulse, and oilseed crops, and make these data accessible through a searchable online repository. Data have been contributed by private and public research organizations including all the current fertilizer companies and state agriculture agencies that have done experiments over the past 40 years. The data set can then be used by growers and advisors to estimate critical soil test values and response curves for various crop and nutrient combinations.

During 2011, data entry was completed with data from over 4,500 nutrition experiments entered with most data for N and P responses on wheat and barley. A web interface to the database called the “BFDC Interrogator” was developed. The project team met in March and November 2011 to test these calibrations. The plan is that the website will go “live” in June 2012.

Training in the use of the interface was started on a trial basis in October 2011 with a group of agronomists in central New South Wales. This course was supported by the development of a technical manual to describe how to use the Interrogator, as well as materials to support the training of operators. Protocols are being developed to include long-term fertilizer trial data into the database, as well as strategies to maintain the database once the GRDC project funding ceases in June 2012. The project is led by New South Wales DPI, and supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation. ANZ-09