New environment-friendly and cost-saving fertiliser recommendation system for supporting sustainable agriculture in Hungary and beyond

Abstract

In the current economic situation the former, intensive fertiliser recommendation system is unfit to help Hungarian farmers in their fertilising practice. The aim of the new system has been to apply the lowest possible NPK rates required to achieve safe and high yields as well as allowing minimal agricultural NP losses to surface and subsurface waters. The new system was developed by using the correlations revealed by analyzing the results of long-term fertilisation experiments set up in Hungary between 1960 and 2000. Several field experiments as well as comparative analyses confirmed the correctness of the basic principles as well as of the methods of calculating fertiliser rates of the new system. An estimated amount of 3,200,000 € was saved for the Hungarian farmers in 2007 alone by giving recommendations for more than 160,000 ha arable land applying the new system.

Keywords

• long-term experiments
• database
• cost saving
• environmentally friendly
• fertiliser recommendation
• expert system