Frequent failure of nutrients to increase plant biomass supports the need for precision fertilization in agriculture
Carroll, Oliver H.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Harpole, W. Stanley; Wilfahrt, Peter; Arnillas, Carlos A.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Blumenthal, Dana M.; Boughton, Elizabeth; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Caldeira, Maria; Campbell, Malcolm M.; Catford, Jane; Chen, Qingqing; Dickman, Christopher R.; Donohue, Ian; DuPre, Mary Ellyn; Eskelinen, Anu; Estrada, Catalina; Fay, Philip A.; Fraser, Evan D. G.; Hagenah, Nicole; Hautier, Yann; Hersh-Green, Erika; Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg S.; Kadoya, Taku; Komatsu, Kimberly; Lannes, Luciola; Liang, Maowei; Venterink, Harry Olde; Peri, Pablo; Power, Sally A.; Price, Jodi N.; Ren, Zhengwei; Risch, Anita C.; Sonnier, Grégory; Veen, G. F.; Virtanen, Risto; Wardle, Glenda M.; Waring, Elizabeth F.; Wheeler, George; Yahdjian, Laura; MacDougall, Andrew S. (2025-04-25)
Springer
25.04.2025
Carroll, O.H., Seabloom, E.W., Borer, E.T. et al. Frequent failure of nutrients to increase plant biomass supports the need for precision fertilization in agriculture. Sci Rep 15, 14564 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-99071-z.
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202504282942
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202504282942
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Implementing precision fertilization to maximize crop yield while minimizing economic and environmental impacts has become critical for agriculture. Variability in biomass response to fertilization within fields, among regions, and over time creates simultaneous risks of under-yielding and overfertilization. We quantify factors determining fertilization responsiveness (i.e., biomass increases with fertilization) up to 15 years in 61 unfertilized rangelands on six continents. We demonstrate widespread multi-year variability in responsiveness, with fertilization increasing average yield by 43% but failing to improve biomass 26% of the time. All sites were responsive at least once, but only four of 61 responded in all plots and years. Modelled management scenarios highlighted that fertilizer cessation is likely to generate sizable economic savings but always reduces yield because of the difficulty in predicting when and where biomass will be unresponsive. This work reveals substantial scale-dependent variability in fertilization responsiveness globally, while clarifying the prospects and pitfalls of managing more spatially and temporally precise nutrient application.
Implementing precision fertilization to maximize crop yield while minimizing economic and environmental impacts has become critical for agriculture. Variability in biomass response to fertilization within fields, among regions, and over time creates simultaneous risks of under-yielding and overfertilization. We quantify factors determining fertilization responsiveness (i.e., biomass increases with fertilization) up to 15 years in 61 unfertilized rangelands on six continents. We demonstrate widespread multi-year variability in responsiveness, with fertilization increasing average yield by 43% but failing to improve biomass 26% of the time. All sites were responsive at least once, but only four of 61 responded in all plots and years. Modelled management scenarios highlighted that fertilizer cessation is likely to generate sizable economic savings but always reduces yield because of the difficulty in predicting when and where biomass will be unresponsive. This work reveals substantial scale-dependent variability in fertilization responsiveness globally, while clarifying the prospects and pitfalls of managing more spatially and temporally precise nutrient application.
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