Balanced Fertilization of Major Crops in Egypt

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 Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), 5) NPK as recommended by MOA, 6) NPK based on soil testing, and 7) NPK Based on soil testing + micronutrients.

For all crops and at the two locations, balanced fertilization helped maximize yield and yield components. At El-Behira site, wheat grain yield was the highest (6.0 t/ha) for the NPK+micronutrients treatment, whereas control and the farmers' practice resulted in the lowest yields (2.1 and 4.1 t/ha, respectively). A similar trend was observed in the maize crop, where the highest yield (6.7 t/ha) was obtained with the NPK+micronutrients, while control and farmers' practice gave 2.0 and 4.7 t/ha, respectively. In addition, protein contents were 11.3, 8.5, and 9.4% for the NPK+micronutrients, control, and farmer practice, respectively. Similarly, at El-Monofia site, the highest yield for the lupine as a winter crop was for the NPK+micronutrients treatment (1.65 t/ha), while the control and the farmers' practice resulted in the lowest yields (1.2 and 1.4 t/ha, respectively). The corn as a summer crop recorded the highest yield (10.0 t/ha) with NPK+micronutrients, while the control and farmers' practice gave 4.7 and 6.4 t/ha, respectively.