International Fertiliser Society (IFS) poster submissions
ESR-6 Clara Kopp & ESR-10 Pietro Mendonca de Santis Sica
Every year, the International Fertiliser Society (IFS) organizes the IFS Agronomic Conference. In this conference, it is held the Brian Chambers award for young researchers who can demonstrate how their work will provide practical benefits to farm crop nutrition. Last year, Clara and Pietro had their work selected for the finals. Their posters were displayed at the conference and presented via video.
In her presentation, Clara showed some of her work on the acid activation of ashes and biochars from P-rich waste streams. To test the approach of activation sulfuric acid was applied to different biochars and ashes and the effect on water-extractable P was analyzed. The untreated and activated materials were applied in a pot experiment growing maize and biomass yield and plant P uptake were measured. The acid activation increased biomass and P uptake for all the materials compared to the untreated material and it was concluded that it is a promising approach to increase plant P availability from P-rich ashes and biochars.
Pietro presented part of his first-year screening experiments, which were divided into three studies. First, the effects of different pre-treatments (acidification and alkalinization) of contrasting biomaterials on P availability and dynamics in the soil were assessed. Based on these results, the acidification pre-treatment was selected and assessed with seven biomaterials in a pot experiment with wheat. The results of this study showed that the placement of acidified meat and bone meal and biogas fiber were promising. Thus, in the third study, it was assessed the effects of the placement of acidified biogas fiber on ten different horticulture crops. The results of these studies showed that the acidification and localized application of biomaterials are promising approaches to increase the plant P uptake. However, these results indicate that the placement of P-rich fertilizers may imply an opportunity cost for the plant on exploring the soil resources, which is limiting the plant growth. Therefore, in the next years, Pietro will be working to optimize the match between crop demand and fertilizer release in the placement area to compensate for this opportunity loss.