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Chinese Researcher bags the IFA 2007 Award for correcting “Sins of the Past”

During the past thirty years, fertilizer use in China has grown rapidly. Unfortunately, information on how to use fertilizers wisely has not spread as quickly, leading to low nutrient use efficiency and related unwanted environmental impacts. The nutrient management research directed by Fusuo Zhang, who has been selected to receive the 2007 IFA International Crop Nutrition Award, has provided innovative approaches to help correct these problems. Since 1998, much of his work has concentrated on the development of optimized nutrient management techniques for high yield and high-efficiency crop production. This method involves better matching of applications to crop nutrient requirements by taking into account all sources of nutrients, including significant quantities of nitrogen from atmospheric deposition (more than 60 kg N/ hectare in parts of the North China Plain). His approach involves nutrient budgeting, dynamic monitoring of nutrient concentrations in the root zone (rhizosphere) at different points in the growth cycle, real-time soil testing and plant analysis. Among his many other accomplishments, Professor Zhang has served as project leader for two large Sino-German research projects in the North China Plain concerned with sustainable farming (1998-2003) and modelling of material flows and production systems for sustainable resource use in intensified crop production (2004-08). He led another project between 2003 and 2006, funded by the Ministry of Agriculture of China, on nutrient management in the country’s main cropping systems to improve nutrient use efficiency, crop yield and environmental protection.

Published 30th April 2007