Study Shows Struvite Good Phosphorus Source for Crops

By Kaine Korzekwa

Studying new fertilizer options is the first step to getting farmers to eventually use them on their crops. A mineral called struvite has the potential to be an effective phosphorus fertilizer that may be considered organic.

Joanne Thiessen Martens, researcher from the University of Manitoba–Canada, along with collaborators, studied how struvite impacted three crops. These were spring wheat, flax, and an alfalfa-grass forage mixture.

"Struvite is a naturally occurring mineral that can be extracted from nutrient-rich wastes, such as municipal wastewater or manure," Thiessen Martens says. "It is rich in phosphorus and seems to be a relatively good phosphorus fertilizer."

She adds that recovering the fertilizer from wastewater also reduces the amount of phosphorus entering the environment. Excess phosphorus can be harmful to the environment.

The research was recently published in the Agronomy Journal, a publication of the American Society of Agronomy.

In their study, they applied struvite to fields of the three crops at different rates. They then looked at yields from the crops and measured how much phosphorus the crops contained after harvest. Their goal was to find the best application rate of struvite that provided a good amount of phosphorus to the crops.