Fertilizers provide the nutrients needed by crops to grow well, especially vital ones such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). It replaces and supplements the nutrients from the soil that is depleted after a harvest to enable crops to have high yields in every growing season.
Ensuring an optimal level of nutrient is vital to maximize crop yield, and by extension, profitability. Too little fertiliser or nutrients available for crops limits the plant growth. Alternatively, too much fertiliser prevents the crops from taking up water through their roots, as they rely on osmosis to do it. Over-fertilisation increases the concentration of dissolved solids to the point that water flows out of the plants instead of into it, resulting in leaf burning or wilting, stunted growth and even death after a prolonged period. Furthermore, the excess fertilisers can leach into the farm’s surrounding, including groundwater sources and rivers, resulting in contamination or harmful algae blooms. When applying fertilizers, the plants and their root systems fare better when the level of nutrients stay consistent with minimal variation.
For many farms without automation, the manual preparation of fertilizer in any form is a very laborious process and prone to human errors that can result in inconsistent concentration in the fertigation solution. Furthermore, traditional farms do not have any precise data such as EC for nutrient management, meaning the adjustments can only be done reactively, instead of proactively. This can be resolved with fertigation as the method of nutrient delivery, which provides small amounts of dissolved fertilizer in each watering cycle.
As for monitoring the nutrient levels required for specific crops, the easiest method would be to measure the Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soil. Applying fertilizers increases the dissolved salts in the soil, which changes the EC. In agricultural applications, EC is a useful indicator of soil salinity and fertilizer concentration. Having this data can help a farmer pre-emptively adjust fertilizer levels that are too high before any damage is done to the plants. It can contribute to a more cost-effective usage of fertilizers and maximization of crop yields.
