The intensification of agriculture in India has led to the increasing removal of secondary and micronutrients from the soil and multiple nutrient deficiencies, which are becoming a major constraint to further increase in production. This is essentially due to nutrient removals far in excess of nutrient additions.The greatest blame for soil nutrient depletion rests with unbalanced fertiliser application consisting of large N applications without a matching amount of other nutrients. What farmers have in fact been doing in many areas, year after year, is to use N (urea) as a shovel to extract the soil reserves of other nutrients, particularly K, P, S and in several cases micronutrients as well. It is the depletion of nutrients which has resulted in large increases in crop response to P and K with the passage of time. The real alarming situation is that in many cases even the recommended application of fertilisers results in soil nutrient depletion because they turn out to be sub-optimal for supporting high-yielding intensive cropping systems.

The intensification of agriculture in India has led to the increasing removal of secondary and micronutrients from the soil and multiple nutrient deficiencies, which are becoming a major constraint to further increase in production. This is essentially due to nutrient removals far in excess of nutrient additions.The greatest blame for soil nutrient depletion rests with unbalanced fertiliser application consisting of large N applications without a matching amount of other nutrients. What farmers have in fact been doing in many areas, year after year, is to use N (urea) as a shovel to extract the soil reserves of other nutrients, particularly K, P, S and in several cases micronutrients as well. It is the depletion of nutrients which has resulted in large increases in crop response to P and K with the passage of time. The real alarming situation is that in many cases even the recommended application of fertilisers results in soil nutrient depletion because they turn out to be sub-optimal for supporting high-yielding intensive cropping systems.