Balanced Fertilization of Major Crops in Egypt

The objectives of this project were to: (1) evaluate the benefits 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 in Port Said Governorate on sugar beet as a winter crop in the 2016/2017 season, which was planted after the rice crop Giza 178 in one location. In another location in the same Governorate, the same experiment was conducted on wheat as a winter crop planted after the rice crop in 2016/2017 season. The following treatments were investigated: (1) farmer fertilization practice (FFP), (2) nitrogen and phosphorus (NP), (3) nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK), (4) NPK+boron (B), (5) NPK+zinc (Zn) and (6) NPK+B+Zn.

The sugar beet root yield and percent sucrose increased with balanced fertilization and the highest result was from treatment 6 with a yield of 46.4 t/ha and 20.2% sucrose. The lowest yield (38.9 t/ha) and lowest sucrose % (18.2) resulted from FFP. Similarly, in the second site, the wheat grain yield was the highest (7.8 t/ha) for the balanced fertilization with micronutrients and was the lowest (5.7 t/ha) for FFP. In the third site where mango and pear trees were grown, the fruit weights per tree were the highest for the balanced fertilization which reached 79.4 kg/tree for pear and 33.5 kg/tree for mango. The lowest fruit yield (49.4 and 13.8 kg/tree, respectively) resulted from FFP.