Screening fertilizers for their phosphorus runoff risk using laboratory methods

Losses of phosphorus (P) from fertilized fields may result in degradation water quality. Various initiatives are under evaluation to minimize contamination, including the adoption less soluble or coated P fertilizer formulations aiming mitigate losses runoff. Field-based rainfall simulators traditionally used evaluate runoff, but using these is time consuming, labor intensive, and costly given complex apparatus analyses involved. We hypothesized that laboratory-based methods could be useful risk runoff fertilizers. In order identify a rapid, inexpensive, efficient screening process, we compared two laboratory-scale measurements, one (based on electrical conductivity measurements) soil visualization diffusion soil), with results field-, glasshouse-, simulators, phosphate The assessing release rate correlated closely (r ≥ .96) obtained three regardless type coating solubility fertilizer. faster inexpensive methodologies were rank fertilizers by Hence, tools for respect their risk.