FAO project for development of site-specific fertiliser management systems for sustainable crop prod

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is inaugurating a project together with the Department of Agriculture (DOA) to assist developing site-specific fertilizer management systems for sustainable crop production in Sri Lanka. The project “Development of site-specific fertilizer management systems for sustainable crop production” with the funding of FAO’s Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP), is seeking to enhance the capacities of the Government of Sri Lanka to reduce the excessive use of fertilizer.

Marking the inauguration of this important project, the inception workshop took place at National Agricultural Information and Communication Center, Gannoruwa in Kandy on 3 April patronage of Director General of the DoA Dr. Roahn Wijekoon. With the implementation of USD 271,000 worth project, it is expected that the amount of fertilizer being used by farmers will lessen and be more effectively applied while reducing the production costs. Which will also demote land degradation that occurs by acidification of soils, soil salinity build-up and environmental contamination from run-off from the field.

Since late 1950s, Sri Lankan farmers are applying imported inorganic fertilizer to enhance crop yields. Productivity increase programs and fertilizer subsidy schemes in the country paved the way to dramatic increase of agrochemical usage. During past 15 years, importation of fertilizer to the country shows a positive trend.  High doses of fertilizer only promotes excessive vegetative growth does not contribute to an economic yield increase in most of the crops. Furthermore, high use of fertilizer make crops more susceptible to pest and diseases attacks and promote weed growth resulting additional application of pesticides and weedicides to avoid yield losses. This leads to many issues such as contamination of water, soils and food systems by agrochemicals.

In 1964, DOA developed fertilizer recommendations for rice, low-country vegetables, up-country vegetables, potatoes, fruits and other field crops and updated the recommendations regularly. These recommendations were based on factors such as soils, agro-climatic zones, crop performances and method of irrigation. In the early 1990s a basic site-specific fertilizer application system was introduced for all the food crops. At present MOA has implemented a site-specific fertilizer application scheme to test fertilizer application in paddy field based on soil test value for different agrarian service region. To develop a site-specific fertilizer application scheme for the whole country and all crops, the MOA needs to expand the testing capacities and update information on the soil in various parts of the country. With such information, Sri Lanka could introduce a system used in some other countries through which farmers only need to provide limited data on their farm such as soil type, previous crop, amount of fertilizer used in the past and the intended crops for the optimal fertilizer input to be calculated.