D3.7 Product specification and practical criteria to produce TMFs that meets with the nutrient requirements of soil-crop combinations

Abstract

This study was carried out and published as a part of the European demonstration project FERTIMANURE funded by the H2020 programme (project number 862849). The project FERTIMANURE focuses on innovative nutrient recovery technologies treating animal manures or digestate and on the evaluation of applications of Bio-Based Fertilisers (BBFs) produced at five pilot installations and Tailor-Made Fertilisers (TMFs) as blends of BBFs and (synthetic) mineral fertilisers and/or biostimulants for crop specific applications. One of the tasks within the FERTIMANURE project is to develop a practical approach for the production of centralised TMFs (Task 3.2. Centralised production of Tailor-Made Fertilisers and D3.2) to be carried out within WP3 in the period July 2021 (M19) and June 2024 (M54) of the project. In this final report the approach is described regarding data requirements, methodology, tool and preliminary results are presented. Data of the composition of BBFs are derived from the pilot installations monitored within WP2. The approach focuses mainly on the production of TMF for crops used in the field tests and pot trials within WP4 where the agronomic values of BBFs and TMFs are determined. The approach to produce TMFs started in the second year of the H2020 FERTIMANURE project (M13-M24), and was update in year 3 (M36) and at the end of the project (M54) based on new monitoring data (WP2). Task 3.2 “Centralised production of Tailor-Made Fertilisers” is led by Wageningen Research and the partners involved are Fertinagro, University of Ghent, University of Milan, University of Vic, DARP and Agri. This report describes the product specification and practical criteria for producing TMFs for selected crops (Deliverable 3.7) to be published as report in June 2024. In the FERTIMANURE project and tasks of the WPs, it was never meant to develop a TMF-tool, but it helped in structuring the approach and data demand. The involved researchers of Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR) have put a lot of additional time into the process of TMF-production in order to develop and finalise the TMF-tool and to make it user-friendly for broader distribution. We would like to acknowledge the pilot plants and staff of APF (NL), Fraunhofer (D), UGent (B), LEITAT (ES), RITTMO (F) and UMIL (IT) who delivered information about the quality of the produced BBFs and information on the distribution and application of their products. Furthermore, we would like to thank Mirko Cucina and Fabrizio Adani of the University of Milan and Ivona Sigurnjak and Erik Meers of the University of Ghent for their contribution to data collection as part of WP2 and WP4, respectively, and finally Kimo van Dijk (WENR), Berta Singla Just (Uvic), Nicolas Thevenin (RITTMO), Carlos Ortiz (GENCAT), Laura Diaz Guerra (BETA Technological Centre), Ruben Vingerhoets (UGent), Sophie Schönfeld (Fraunhofer Umsicht), Ana Robles (Uvic),