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Unveiling Chemical Gradients in the Fertosphere: A Paradigm Shift to Enhance Fertilizer Efficiency and Decrease the
Enzo Lombi1, Casey L Doolette1, Rodrigo Coqui da Silva1
1Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia 5095, Australia.
Environmental Science & Technology
|July 17, 2025
Summary
Improving fertilizer efficiency is crucial for sustainable agriculture. New spatially resolved techniques reveal soil-fertilizer interactions in the fertosphere, enhancing nutrient use and guiding novel fertilizer development.
Area of Science:
- Soil science
- Agronomy
- Environmental science
Background:
- Fertilizers are vital for food production, but current practices suffer from low nutrient use efficiency, causing economic losses and environmental damage.
- Understanding soil-fertilizer interactions is key to improving efficiency, yet traditional 'bulk' soil approaches oversimplify these complex processes.
- The chemical gradients within the fertosphere, the soil zone directly surrounding fertilizers, are critical but often overlooked.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the limitations of bulk soil analysis in understanding soil-fertilizer interactions.
- To introduce advanced analytical techniques for studying the fertosphere.
- To demonstrate how understanding chemical gradients in the fertosphere can improve fertilizer use and development.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing non-destructive, in situ, and spatially resolved analytical techniques.
- Employing mapping of diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) to quantify nutrient availability in 2D.
- Combining DGT with imaging X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES-imaging) to analyze chemical speciation along soil gradients.
Main Results:
- Spatially resolved techniques provide a more accurate picture of nutrient dynamics in the fertosphere than bulk methods.
- DGT and XANES-imaging can map nutrient availability and chemical speciation in two dimensions.
- These methods reveal how chemical gradients influence nutrient availability around fertilizers.
Conclusions:
- A paradigm shift towards studying the fertosphere using advanced analytical techniques is necessary.
- Understanding chemical gradients is essential for improving agronomic practices and developing more efficient fertilizers.
- This knowledge is particularly relevant for developing fertilizers from recycled materials and closing nutrient cycles within planetary boundaries.
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