Effective strategy to improve nitrification inhibitor efficiency and minimize environmental risk with...

Over half the global population depends on food grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, but much of this nitrogen is lost as nitrates, N₂O and NH₃, harming the environment and health and incurring substantial environmental costs. Practical technologies aimed at enhancing nitrogen efficiency to reduce these losses promised considerable societal benefits. Nitrification inhibitors (NIs) can help reduce these losses, but their effectiveness varies, often lasting only weeks or days, for the strategy to improve NIs efficiency reducing environmental pollution that are still poorly contrived. Therefore, this study developed a novel approach by ecofriendly alginate and polyphenols to create a microenvironment (SANMP), which increased NIs based on DMPP stability at temperatures between 70 and 125 °C (47%-77% increase), in compound fertilizers (1.4%-11% increase), and in soils with a wide pH range of 5.6-7.9 (21%-27% increase). Enhanced stability can significantly increase environmental benefits in agriculture. SANMP reduces N₂O emissions by 89% relative to nitrogen fertilizer-only treatments and a further 26% decrease compared to traditional DMPP formulations. Analysis of the chemical structure of alginate-metal-polyphenol hybrid materials demonstrated that DMPP immobilization, achieved through pore filling, chelation, and electrostatic attraction, significantly reduced its degradation from high temperatures, pH fluctuations, environmental ions, and soil microbial activities. The novel microenvironment offers an effective solution to the problems of high cost and unstable inhibition efficiency of DMPP, thus improving its environmental and agricultural benefits. This technology promises to offer solutions for nutrient management strategies that are efficient, highly beneficial to the environment and cost-effective.