New Eco-Friendly Polymeric-Coated Urea Fertilizers Enhanced Crop Yield in Wheat

Ricardo Gil-Ortiz,Antonio Ruiz-Navarro,Marcos Caballero-Molada,Sergio Atares,Oscar Vicente,Miguel Ángel Naranjo,Carlos García

doi:10.3390/agronomy10030438

Abstract

Presently, there is a growing interest in developing new controlled-release fertilizers based on ecological raw materials. The present study aims to compare the efficacy of two new ureic-based controlled-release fertilizers formulated with water-soluble polymeric coatings enriched with humic acids or seaweed extracts. To this end, an experimental approach was designed under controlled greenhouse conditions by carrying out its subsequent field scaling. Different physiological parameters and crop yield were measured by comparing the new fertilizers with another non polymeric-coated fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, and an untreated ‘Control’. As a result, on the microscale the fertilizer enriched with humic acids favored a better global response in the photosynthetic parameters and nutritional status of wheat plants. A significant 1.2-fold increase in grain weight yield and grain number was obtained with the humic acid polymeric fertilizer versus that enriched with seaweed extracts; and also, in average, higher in respect to the uncoated one. At the field level, similar results were confirmed by lowering N doses by 20% when applying the humic acid polymeric-coated produce compared to ammonium nitrate. Our results showed that the new humic acid polymeric fertilizer facilitated crop management and reduced the environmental impact generated by N losses, which are usually produced by traditional fertilizers.

Highlights

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), wheat is the world’s largest cultivated crop per hectare and the third largest cereal to be produced [1]
No significant differences were observed for the various treatments performed for chlorophyll content and ΦPSII, measured by nondestructive techniques in the phenological state of panicles swelling, they were significant compared to the CONTROL (Table 2)
The total fresh weight of aerial parts was 1.4- and 1.7-fold significantly higher for the plants fertilized with DURAMON®

Summary

Introduction

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), wheat is the world’s largest cultivated crop per hectare and the third largest cereal to be produced [1]. In the European Union, 144.5 million tons were harvested in 2016 and production is estimated to increase by. The world’s production in 2017 was expected to come to 744.5 million tons, an increase that comes close to 1000% since 1990/1991. Current cereal production demand and gradual soil impoverishment mean that it is increasingly necessary to apply more fertilizers, mainly nitrogenous ones [2]. High quantities of nitrogen (N) per hectare need to be applied to soil to produce optimum wheat grain yields [3].

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