Tag: water conservation and irrigation

The characteristic of good fertilizer are:

1. It should be soluble in water so that it can penetrate the soil and thus it may be easily assimilated by the plants.
2. It must have essential elements in the form of a compound, which can be easily assimilated by plants.
3. It should not alter the acidity or alkalinity of soil.
4. It should not be fairly stable i.e it not decompose rapidly in soil and lose its essential element.
5. It storage properties must be good with little or no tendency to setting or deliquescence.

Foliar fertilizers are applied directly to leaves. The method is almost invariably used to apply water-soluble straight nitrogen fertilizers and used especially for high value crops such as fruits.

The addition of fertilizer to irrigation water is called "fertigation".

There are actually only two classes of fertilisers: liquid and solid, but the majority of fertilisers used in agriculture are in solid state.

Liquid fertilizer is inorganic substance produced industrially and introduced into the soil in a liquid state. Liquid fertilizers include nitrogenous fertilizers,, anhydrous liquid ammonia, aqueous ammonia, ammoniates, concentrated solutions of ammonium nitrate and urea, and complex fertilizers containing two or three basic plant food elements(nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) in various proportions.

The nitrophosphate process (also known as the Odda process) was a method for the industrial production of nitrogen fertilizers, invented by Erling Johnson in the municipality of Odda, Norway, around 1927.

Superphosphate of lime dissolved with water converts in phosphorous which can be added into soil that can be absorbed by plants.

Fertilizers are materials which supply essential elements to the plants through soil.

The key element required for plants in the soil is nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. So, it is delivered in form of fertilizers.