Balanced Fertilization of Major Crops in Egypt

The objectives of this project were to determine the effect of balanced fertilization on the yield of major crops of the common cropping systems in Egypt and 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 including no fertilizer (control), NPK according to the farmer's practice (FP), NP at the recommended rates by Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), NK as recommended by MOA, NPK as recommended by MOA, NPK based on soil testing, and NPK based on soil testing + micronutrients.
For all crops and at all three locations, balanced fertilization helped maximize yield and yield components. At the El-Behira site, wheat grain yield was the highest (7.2 t/ha) for the NPK+micronutrients treatment, whereas control and FP treatments resulted in the lowest yields (2.5 and 4.6 t/ha, respectively). Similar trend was observed for the maize crop, where the highest yield (8.5 t/ha) was obtained with the NPK+micronutrients, while lowest yields were observed in control (3 t/ha) and FP (5.6 t/ha) treatments. Results at the El-Monofia site were similar with highest (7.9 t/ha) wheat grain yield observed in the NPK+micronutrients treatment, while control and FP treatments resulted in lowest yields of 4.1 and 4.8 t/ha, respectively. Again, the maize crop recorded highest yield (12.8 t/ha) with NPK+micronutrients, while control and FP treatments resulted in lowest yields of 10.3 and 11.6 t/ha, respectively. Due to some administrative reasons, no experiments could be conducted at the third (Ismailia) site. Egypt-01