Developing trends and challenges of water soluble fertilizer industry in China

Water soluble fertilizer (WSF) is a new-type of fertilizer with the extension of fertigation technology. Because of the special requirements by pipe or drip irrigation, some specific criteria are drawn up for WSF, mainly in the concentrations and dissolving rates of nutrients, and the water-insoluble solid contents. This paper summarized the concept and properties of WSF through literatures reviewing and the development of industry history, reviewed the development and changes of product standards, formula, processing, functions and applications, and analyzed the theoretical basis of nutrients efficiently synthetical utilization from the rootzone supply of water soluble fertilizer. Rootzone environment and supply of water and fertilizer are the keys to regulate soil health and high productivity. It is important to integrate the nutrient supply considering formulas, rates, timings, applied position and soil environment. While the healthy root system and adopted rootzone nutrient supply, capacity, ion balance and buffering capacity are interacted each other. This paper pointed out the importance of combination of fertilizer product, irrigation equipment, and agro-chemical service based the theoretical analyses. On the basis of the market demand, the improvement of WSF factory should be achieved by the innovation of raw materials and their related functions, together with new technology and agro-chemical service. Modifying the product registering standards and smart application technique for healthy market development of WSF are necessary. The paper also predicted that functional fluid WSF, with amino acids, fulvic acids or other organic types, would be the most competitive WSF product. Large-scale farming will lead to the development of low-price WSF product with macroelements, and the packaged fertilizers and related agronomic services will stimulate the demand of enhanced functional WSF.