How do I know if it works?

Fertilizers have a significant positive impact on productivity for most farmers. They are also a significant input cost. Farmers are therefore constantly evaluating the most cost effective products and techniques to maximise their return from fertilizer use.

This is an incentive to the industry to develop products and techniques that are cost effective. It is also an opportunity for unscrupulous operators to market products unethically with unproven and doubtful claims.

There are many products that have proven to be effective in providing nutrients to plants, either by directly supplying the nutrient element or improving the efficiency of uptake. There are also many products marketed as fertilizers, soil improver's or biological agents that are either unproven or of doubtful value.

To ensure that growers purchasing fertilizers are not misled, Fertilizer Australia members are committed to only making product efficacy claims that are capable of substantiation, either by trial work or reference to accepted scientific literature.

This does not preclude the promotion of products that have unproven efficacy, as long as the purchaser is not misled about the level of confidence in the product.

Confidence in the efficacy of fertilizer products is established by glasshouse and field trials.

Typically several rates of fertilizer, including zero, are applied and plant responses are measured. Responses may be yield or quality measures or a combination of both.

Trials are designed so that statistical techniques can be used to analyse the results, and quantify how confident we are that the fertilizer has had a real effect.

It is generally accepted that if the analysis demonstrates that there is 95% chance that the measured difference is real then this is a statistically significant difference.

If statistically significant results are achieved for trials repeated over a number of locations and seasons, then there is a very high degree of confidence that the product is effective when used in the types of environments tested.

The information below has been provided by member companies to assist growers and their advisors in selecting products that could be used to improve nitrogen use efficiency, particularly in sugar cane.

Fertilizer Australia is not recommending or endorsing any products and encourages growers to seek advice on nutrient management from a Fertcare Accredited Advisor

Agripower

Agripower Silica for Sugarcane.pdf

Silica Fertilizer

Sira Soil Amendment

BioAg

BioAg Summary Information.pdf

BioAg How Biological Active is Your Soil.pdf

BioAg Sugar India.pdf

Everris / Impact Fertilisers

Agrocote

Incitec Pivot Fertilisers

The Productivity Times - Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Practice.pdf