Abstract
Rising world population is expected to increase the demand for nitrogen fertilizers to improve crop yield and ensure food security. With existing challenges on low nutrient use efficiency (NUE) of urea and its environmental concerns, controlled release fertilizers (CRFs) have become a potential solution by formulating them to synchronize nutrient release according to the requirement of plants. However, the most significant challenge that persists is the “tailing” effect, which reduces the economic benefits in terms of maximum fertilizer utilization. High materials cost is also a significant obstacle restraining the widespread application of CRF in agriculture. The first part of this review covers issues related to the application of conventional fertilizer and CRFs in general. In the subsequent sections, different raw materials utilized to form CRFs, focusing on inorganic and organic materials and synthetic and natural polymers alongside their physical and chemical preparation methods, are compared. Important factors affecting rate of release, mechanism of release and mathematical modelling approaches to predict nutrient release are also discussed. This review aims to provide a better overview of the developments regarding CRFs in the past ten years, and trends are identified and analyzed to provide an insight for future works in the field of agriculture.
Highlights
This article is an open access articleThe world population is forecasted to increase by one third or 2.3 billion in 2050, despite the slower growth rate compared to the last four decades [1,2]
This study suggested that these minerals and binders form physical attraction through Van der Waals forces, hydrogen bonds and electrostatic attractions between molecules, which aids in slowing down the release
The properties of the materials that make controlled release fertilizers (CRFs) sufficiently hydrophobic are essential for achieving controlled release without immediate disruption of the coating wall
Summary
The world population is forecasted to increase by one third or 2.3 billion in 2050, despite the slower growth rate compared to the last four decades [1,2]. As the population keeps blooming, food demand is expected to rise. Fertilizers provide nutrients to plants and are often credited for the improvement in crop yield, which results in exponentially increased fertilizer use worldwide. (Nitrogen/Phosphorus/Potassium), nitrogen (N) is the most crucial and essential to plant growth, and urea is the most commonly used nitrogen-based fertilizer due to its high. The periodic dosing of fertilizer results in concentration fluctuations between ineffective and toxicity levels, which may affect the growth of certain agricultural species [9]
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