Greater efficiency for Potassium supplied with fertilizers

An article published in February 2024 by Nature Food forcefully drew the attention of researchers and producers to a concrete fact: Potassium is drastically declining in cultivated soils. As a result, there is a looming threat to global food security.

Can efficient potassium fertilization solve this problem? It is not that simple, scientists explain.

Is it possible to practice agriculture without adequate potassium availability for crops? The answer is no. To understand why, it is enough to summarize at least the main functions performed by this nutrient element in plants.

Among its main roles, Potassium is essential for regulating the opening and closing of stomata, the flow of liquids inside the plant, and determining its water status, as well as its resistance to drought.

Potassium is also involved in regulating cellular pH and in enzymatic systems necessary for carrying out basic processes, including photosynthesis. It promotes the synthesis and accumulation of sugars in various plant organs, including fruits.

In soils, Potassium is present in variable amounts depending on the parent rock, clay content, and organic matter, but typically only a small fraction is released into the soil solution.

The aforementioned scientific article opens with an important observation: while there has long been widespread discussion of phosphorus depletion — the difficulty cultivated plants face in acquiring phosphorus from soils, even when present in high quantities, due to its tendency to become immobilized — and while nitrogen use inefficiency is a central concern for producers (and legislators), there is much less discussion about the progressive reduction of potassium levels in cultivated soils. And this is despite the fact that about 20% of cultivated soils worldwide (mainly located in America, Asia, and Africa) suffer from potassium deficiency severe enough to significantly reduce yields. This situation is the result of decades of intensive agricultural practices, with removals repeatedly exceeding returns.

In these areas, it is therefore necessary to increase potassium applications to maintain yields at acceptable levels. However, global potassium availability is not unlimited, and the fact that 80% of the potassium used for fertilizer production is concentrated in three countries — Russia, Belarus, and Canada — effectively creates a global agricultural challenge, not just for the most at-risk regions: when resources become scarce, the difficulties impact agriculture worldwide.

Current projections estimate that potassium production could reach its peak in 2057, thanks to the exploitation of new raw potash mines, after which it will enter a phase of decline. Additionally, as stated in the publication, potash prices are highly volatile, and mining activities have extremely high environmental impacts, including the production of sodium chloride-containing waste, which, when accumulated near mines, leads to soil and water releases with devastating salinization effects.

The research then proposes several measures to address the problem. Among these, the application of agricultural practices capable of reducing potassium losses from soils, which mainly occur through leaching, and promoting the bioavailability of potassium already present in soils or applied through fertilization.

Considering that, albeit with some variability, many important crops in our agriculture have high potassium requirements (for example, grapevine, olive, citrus, pome fruits, tomato, sugar beet), the application of this macronutrient remains a cornerstone of good agricultural practice.

However, given the potential supply difficulties that could arise for various reasons (including conflicts and tensions in certain areas of the world), as well as the environmental impact caused both by the extraction of raw potash and by potassium losses from soils through leaching, it is essential to maximize the efficiency of the distributed fertilizer units.

In this regard, organic and organo-mineral fertilization with products containing highly humified organic matrices can exploit the carrier effect of humic and fulvic acids, which “capture” and transport ions like potassium into the soil solution up to the plant roots, preventing both immobilization in clays and leaching by precipitation — a particularly important issue during rainy springs like that of 2025.

Biocomplex 6.8.12, approved for use in organic farming, is an organo-mineral fertilizer produced from a blend of organic fertilizers with a high nitrogen and phosphorus content, enriched with potassium sulfate.
It allows for a both immediate and prolonged fertilizing action, with gradual release of the contained organic nitrogen, enabling a single application at the beginning of the crop cycle. The fertilizing action of the organic component is complemented by the availability of immediately effective nitrogen, thanks to the presence of free amino acids that perform a biostimulant action in synergy with humic acids, allowing for rapid root activity recovery even under unfavorable conditions, such as thermal stress. The presence of potassium is crucial, ensuring reliable quantitative and qualitative production results, improving plant resistance to water and thermal stress, sugar production, fruit size, and coloration. The use of Biocomplex 6.8.12 also increases soil water retention capacity and cation exchange capacity, reducing the risk of nutrient leaching.

Ortofrutta 5.9.16 allows, with a single application, the supply of both the mineral fraction containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and a significant amount of highly humified organic matrix.
The use of Ortofrutta 5.9.16, which improves soil characteristics, protects nutrients thanks to the chelating action of humic acids, leads to a general improvement in fertilization efficiency, and also provides secondary nutrients and micronutrients contained in the organic matrix. Ortofrutta 5.9.16 is formulated in micropellets, which greatly enhance product solubilization efficiency.

Agricomplex 3.6.18 allows, with a single application, the supply of both the mineral fraction containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium exclusively from sulfate, and a significant amount of organic matrix consisting of a blend of highly humified top-quality manures.
Although with a different formulation, Agricomplex 3.6.18 offers similar benefits to those listed for Ortofrutta 5.9.16, but in this case, the pellet size is larger.