Plant nutrition

The production of high-quality food is one of the key objective of sustainable agriculture. The supply with essential minerals (fertilization) influences the formation and storage of plant compounds in various ways.

However, fertilization sometimes also causes unwanted discharges of components into the soil. The improvement of nutrient utilization and simultaneous reduction of unwanted discharges has therefore high priority in agricultural research.

Plant nutrition is closely linked with the disciplines of soil science and crop production. This is even more relevant since some topics require a coordinated approach, for instance increasing the soil’s nutrient storage capacity by humus supplies or safeguarding a sufficient nitrogen availability by appropriate crop rotation.
At the Julius Kühn Institute, the topic of plant nutrition is mainly investigated by the

• Institute of Crop and Soil Science