Day OneWednesday, 10 April 2024

Hidden hunger (i.e., micronutrient deficiencies) in human populations remains highly prevalent worldwide, still affecting over 2 billion people, despite the implementation of various policies and allocation of large amount of resources to the problem over the four to five decades

Micronutrient deficiencies (including zinc, iron, iodine and selenium deficiencies) are responsible for many major health complications including impairments of the immune system, brain function and physical development, especially in children and child-bearing age women. Some of these micronutrient deficiencies also represent a serious threat to crop production.

During this presentation we will focus on this pressing global nutritional problem and provide a number of examples from different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Field experiments over 10-years in multiple countries demonstrated effective enrichment of food crops with micronutrients and very positive outcomes for human nutrition by using micronutrient fertilizer strategy.

We will highlight that soils and fertilizers are the major source of micronutrients entering in the food system. It is, however, unfortunate that the policies and interventions implemented so far to address hidden hunger problem did not pay adequate attention to soil as a source of the hidden hunger problem, and ignored fertilizer-based solutions as an effective solution to the problem.

• With the demand for growing more nutritious food on the increase, what can fertilizer and biostimulant companies be doing to help play a pivotal role?
• How to balance the use of fertilizers that are used to help increase food nutrition with climate change concerns?
• What are the biggest threats for those working in the fertilizer industry right now?
• Where are the biggest opportunities?

Enhanced efficiency fertilizers, such as urea treated with a urease inhibitor, controlled-release fertilizers (CRFs), and fertilizer blends, compose important strategies for improving efficiency in nitrogen (N) use by plants and mitigating ammonia (N-NH₃) emissions. The physical mixture of fertilizers in blends can favor synchronization of N-release from the fertilizers and N-uptake by coffee plants and also dilute the costs of acquiring a pure CRF, making fertilizer blends more accessible to growers. To investigate this, a field experiment was conducted over two consecutive crop years with Coffea arabica with the aim of evaluating nitrogen fertilizer technologies at application rates ranging from 0 to 450 kg N ha⁻¹. The fertilizers were characterized, and analyses were performed to quantify N-release from the fertilizers, ammonia volatilization, and nutritional and yield aspects of the coffee plant. The fertilizers used were urea (UCon), urea treated with N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric-triamide (UNBPT), urea-coated with polymer of the E-Max technology (with 41%N (EMax41) or 43%N (EMax43)), and blends of UNBPT with E-Max (Blend41–Blend43). The cumulative N-release for EMax41 always remained below that for EMax43, just as occurred for Blend41 in relation to Blend43. Over the two crop years, the greatest volatilization of N-NH₃ occurred with UCon (~25%) and the least with EMax41 (9%). The results indicate that the technologies mitigated the N-NH₃ emissions in relation to UCon [EMax41 (63% mitigation) > Blend41 (43%) > EMax43 (32%) > UNBPT (28%) > Blend43 (19%)]. Crop management affects coffee yield. The yield increase went from 20% in the first crop year to 75% in the second, with better results from fertilizers containing CRF. We present information that can assist fertilizer producers and coffee growers, and, above all, we seek to contribute to environmental action for the reduction of agricultural NH₃, clarifying potential strategies for mitigation of these emissions and strategies that generate advances in research on technologies for coffee growing.