Balanced Fertilization of Major Crops in Egypt

In Egypt, application of mineral fertilizers is highly skewed towards N, which has lead to the depletion of other nutrients like K, P, and micronutrients in many soils. The objectives of this project were to: (1) determine the effect of balanced fertilization on the yield of major crops of the common cropping systems in Egypt, and (2) promote and extend to farmers the most efficient fertilization and irrigation techniques. For this, field experiments were conducted at three locations with the following seven treatments: (1) no fertilizer, (2) NPK according to the farmer’s practice, (3) NP at the recommended rate, (4) NK as recommended by Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), (5) NPK as recommended by the MoA, (6) NPK based on soil testing, and (7) NPK Based on soil testing + micronutrients.

For all crops and at all three locations, balanced fertilization helped maximize yield and yield components. At El-Behira, wheat grain yield was the highest (7.8 t/ha) for the NPK+micronutrients treatment, whereas control and the farmers’ practice resulted in the lowest yields (2.4 and 4.2 t/ha, respectively). A similar trend was observed in maize, where the highest yield (9.1 t/ha) was obtained with the NPK+micronutrients, while control and farmers’ practice gave 2.8 and 5.1 t/ha, respectively. Similarly, at El-Monofia, wheat grain yield was the highest (7.9 t/ha) for the NPK+micronutrients treatment, while the control and the farmers’ practice resulted in the lowest yields (3.1 and 4.3 t/ha, respectively). Once again the maize crop recorded the highest yield (12.6 t/ha) with NPK+micronutrients, while the control and farmers’ practice recorded 6.3 and 9.0 t/ha of grain yields, respectively. Similar results were obtained at Ismailia, where yet again the wheat grain yield was the highest (6.25 t/ha) with NPK+micronutrients application, while the control and the NP treatments resulted in the lowest yields (1.0 and 3.7 t/ha , respectively). For fodder sorghum crop, the highest yield (89.7 t/ha) was again obtained with the NPK+micronutrients, while the control and NP treatments had 4.9 and 45.5 t/ha yields, respectively. Egypt-01