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Progress in research on site-specific nutrient management for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

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Title Progress in research on site-specific nutrient management for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
 
Creator Chivenge, P.
Zingore, S.
Ezui, K.S.
Njoroge, Samuel M.
Bunquin, M.A.
Dobermann, A.
Saito, Kazuki
 
Subject nutrient use efficiency
rice
cassava
maize
site-specific nutrient management
 
Description Increasing fertilizer access and use is an essential component for improving crop production and food security in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, given the heterogeneous nature of smallholder farms, fertilizer application needs to be tailored to specific farming conditions to increase yield, profitability, and nutrient use efficiency. The site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) approach initially developed in the 1990 s for generating field-specific fertilizer recommendations for rice in Asia, has also been introduced to rice, maize and cassava cropping systems in SSA. The SSNM approach has been shown to increase yield, profitability, and nutrient use efficiency. Yield gains of rice and maize with SSNM in SSA were on average 24% and 69% when compared to the farmer practice, respectively, or 11% and 4% when compared to local blanket fertilizer recommendations. However, there is need for more extensive field evaluation to quantify the broader benefits of the SSNM approach in diverse farming systems and environments. Especially for rice, the SSNM approach should be expanded to rainfed systems, which are dominant in SSA and further developed to take into account soil texture and soil water availability. Digital decision support tools such as RiceAdvice and Nutrient Expert can enable wider dissemination of locally relevant SSNM recommendations to reach large numbers of farmers at scale. One of the major limitations of the currently available SSNM decision support tools is the requirement of acquiring a significant amount of farm-specific information needed to formulate SSNM recommendations. The scaling potential of SSNM will be greatly enhanced by integration with other agronomic advisory platforms and seamless integration of digital soil, climate and crop information to improve predictions of SSNM recommendations with reduced need for on-farm data collection. Uncertainty should also be included in future solutions, primarily to also better account for varying prices and economic outcomes.
 
Date 2022-05
2022-12-21T08:42:01Z
2022-12-21T08:42:01Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Chivenge, P., Zingore, S., Ezui, K.S., Njoroge, S., Bunquin, M.A., Dobermann, A. and Saito, K. 2022. Progress in research on site-specific nutrient management for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Field Crops Research 281:108503.
1872-6852
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/126154
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2022.108503
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Format 108503
 
Publisher Elsevier
 
Source Field Crops Research