FERTIMANURE ON-GOING FIELD TRIALS

There is a specific Work Package relating to the demonstration of the end-products performance: incubation, pot tests and field trials.
It aims to assess, among others, nutrient recovery efficiency of manure-derived BBFs and TMFs compared to conventional mineral fertilisers, the production of which is based on finite fossil-based resources.
The field trial assessments will take place in several regions of Europe (Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) which thereby represent diverse agro-climatic zones, to build solid results and access the variability of novel fertiliser efficiency on studied crops.
To this end, the FERTIMANURE consortium identified 11 field trials  and 5 pot experiments that will assess the fertiliser potential of manure-derived ammonium sulphate, ammonium nitrate, ammonia water, biochar, K solution (i.e., mechanically separated liquid fraction of digestate or manure after ammonia stripping) and several TMFs in the cultivation of wheat, spinach, strawberries, potatoes, maize, silage maize, ryegrass, sauerkraut cabbage, sugar beet and grass.  

Overall, WP4 aims to test 16 BBFs produced at FERTIMANURE pilots in a laboratory and/or on field scale. A combination of fully controlled lab trials, and the observation of nutrients in the soil and crop in the field will provide a full range of data that allows full comprehension and comparison of novel fertilising products against conventional mineral fertilisers.
Moreover, an investigation on the greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate leaching in the post-harvest period from the application of produced BBFs/TMFs will be assessed. From 11 identified field trials, 10 of them are currently on-going for their first growing season and two seasons are planned (2021 – 2022).
One field trial will start in the autumn as it focuses on winter wheat as a test crop.