Strategies for Improving Crops' Use-Efficiencies of Fertilizer Nutrients in Sustainable Agricultural Systems

Ezekiel Akinkunmi Akinrinde

Acid infertility factors limit crop growth and yield as well as soil productivity in highly weathered soils of humid and sub-humid regions of the world due to deficiency of essential nutrient elements. Plants can be exposed to wide range of stress factors like toxicity of aluminium, manganese, low pH, limited availability of nutrients (phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, molybdenum and zinc). The genetic potentials of improved cultivars (selected and bred to adapt to acid soils as a strategy to ameliorate these conditions) could further be enhanced by optimum nutrition. This contribution explored the effectiveness of other ‘tools' for improving the efficiency of use of native and applied nutrients in the face of increasing fertilizer costs (arising from price subsidy removal in most developing and underdeveloped nations of the world) and the general environmental contamination and/or pollution hazards. In the final analysis, liming as well as the use of vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) fungi and chemical growth substances were particularly highlighted.