Updated nutrient response curves in the northern and southern regions of Australia
The development of the Better Fertilizer Decisions for Crops database has identified gaps in the current region, nutrient and crop combinations. This project will generate data for the dominant crops in the farming sytesm that currently are under-represented in the database. Sites will be selected to develop soil test-crop response relationships and by benchmarking the less common species against wheat and sorghum, to enable the understanding of critical values to be extrapolated more generally across the industry. This project is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation.
IPNI-2016-AUS-025
16 Nov 2016
Fertilizer use and field trials
A summary table as input to determine research priorities
As part of the GRDC supported research project UQ00082, data were compiled for the project team on the number of nutrition experiments by state and crop, and the area, production and value of each crop by state and in some cases - by region within states. The purpose of these data is to provide some guidance on the regions and crops where there are gaps in knowledge of crop nutrition.
A summary of this table is given below:
| Australia | Australia | Vic/SA | ||||
| Crop | Production (kt) | Gross Value ($M) | Trials | Trials/1000 ha | Trials | Trials/kha grown |
| Wheat | 25,200 | 6,177 | 3471 | 0.27 | 927 | 0.26 |
| Barley | 8,421 | 1,614 | 287 | 0.07 | 195 | 0.11 |
| Canola | 3,577 | 1,961 | 576 | 0.23 | 9 | 0.01 |
| Oats | 1,229 | 375 | 14 | 0.02 | 6 | 0.03 |
| Chickpeas | 737 | 1,419 | 6 | 0.01 | 6 | 0.18 |
| Fababean | 392 | 141 | 24 | 0.08 | 1 | 0.00 |
| Field peas | 300 | 98 | 73 | 0.30 | 5 | 0.03 |
| Lentils | 245 | 256 | 2 | 0.01 | 2 | 0.01 |
| Lupins | 644 | 190 | 506 | 0.98 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Grain sorghum | 1,999 | 473 | 123 | 0.19 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Corn (maize) | 456 | 169 | 35 | 0.50 | 35 | 7.27 |
| Soybeans | 46 | 29 | 51 | 1.85 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Sunflower | 28 | 14 | 29 | 1.00 | 20 | 192.31 |
In particular there is little information on crop nutrient responses for pulse crops despite the fact that there is around 750 kt of chickpea, 300 kt of fababean and 245 kt of lentils produced in Australia. These data show that there are important crop gaps in beans in the medium and high rainfall zones of southern Australia lentils in the medium and low rainfall zones, and canola in all zones - but most important in the medium and HRZ. The key nutrient to review firstly would be P for all the pulse crops and canola, and N for canola.
For pulses, assessing N fixation is an important aspect of the P nutrition benefits. Assessments for lentils from the Dahlen site in Victoria in 2005 found Nfix was related to biomass - the %Ndfa did not alter but the biomass increased in response to P which meant more N fixed.
These has been considerable interest in K crop and pasture responses particularly in the high rainfall zones but data is limited. Responses to sulfur are not commonly seen, although in 2016 there were some visual responses seen on lentils grown on coarse textured soils in the low rainfall regions of Victoria - probably due to leaching of S past the rootzone due to the higher than normal rainfall this year.