One Year On: How the Open Data Crop Nutrition Platform is Growing to Support Agricultural Sustainability
In Q3 2022, the International Fertilizer Association (IFA), Agmatix, and the Consortium for Precision Crop Nutrition (CPCN) collaborated to launch a new open data crop nutrition platform, https://cropnutrientdata.net/. The first two databases, focused on crop nutrient omission and crop nutrient content data, made fast progress and resulted in a published paper on estimating maize harvest index and nitrogen concentrations in grain and residue. Since then, further progress has been made and many new contributors have joined the push for accessible, high-quality open data to accelerate research and innovation on improving yields and sustainability through better crop nutrition.
In terms of users and contributors, the open database has seen great progress, with over 2,000 datasets having been added over the past year. These come from a variety of sources and represent over 50 collaborating researchers and from over 70 contributing countries. In just the past year, over 400 registered users from 300+ organizations have signed up to access the database, making it one of the largest crop nutrient databases in the world. The database experiences daily growth, with data being continuously added to enhance its breadth, while also maintaining a high standard of data quality. Let’s take a look at some of the exciting projects the open data platform has seen over the last year:
Anglo American becomes the first commercial contributor
In December 2020, ahead of the official launch, Anglo American became the first global agronomic data initiative commercial contributor. The CPCN utilized this contributed data, alongside further data within the open data crop nutrition platform to create models used to improve estimates of crop harvest index and nutrient removal. These models have been published in Field Crops Research, an international journal for scientific articles on new scientific insights, original technologies or novel methods at crop, field, farm, and landscape levels.
Commenting on their contribution, Daniel Kindred, Crop Scientist with Anglo American stated: “We’re delighted to lead the way as the first commercial contributor to the global agronomic data initiative. Knowing our data has already been used to create valuable models that have been published in an important industry journal is a great achievement, and just goes to show how important contributing to these high-quality open databases is for the agricultural industry. We hope others will join us in revolutionizing agriculture with open data, as we collectively strive for sustainable food production and better crop yields.”
The International Potash Institute joins the push for accessible agronomic data
Recently, the International Potash Institute (IPI) joined forces in contributing data within the open data crop nutrition platform, showcasing their commitment to advancing knowledge in the field. IPI has made significant contributions to the trial omission data available on the open database, adding over 1385 trials from 250 separate research projects. The data is from a diverse geographical range, including data from across Africa, India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and South America.
Primarily focusing on comparing the impact of potassium in fertilizer products to local practices, these trials shed light on the influence of potassium products on crop yield and the practical usage of such products within local agricultural contexts.
On their contribution to cropnutrientdata.net, Mr. Shay Mey-Tal, IPI Director, commented: “By collaborating with the CPCN and contributing to the open database, we hope to provide researchers, policymakers, and agricultural experts with vital insights into optimizing potassium utilization for improved crop production. We benefit from this collaboration too, by enhancing our understanding of agricultural practices and by encouraging the exchange of knowledge and the pursuit of sustainable farming methods worldwide.”
The FAO forges exciting plans
One of the biggest challenges facing the world today is global food security under a changing climate. Experts predict that from 2020 to 2050, 50% more food must be produced, which also requires managing plant nutrients in a more efficient manner. Crop nitrogen use efficiency, for example, needs to increase from about 55% at present to 70%, to achieve both higher yields and greater environmental sustainability. To guide in this effort, FAO in collaboration with IFA and researchers from other organizations have released a new reference database for the global Cropland Nutrient Budget, designed to provide information on nutrient budgets and use efficiency for every country in the world. Data from cropnutrientdata.net has served as the foundation for quantifying crop nutrient removal, and ongoing efforts will focus on enhancing both the quality and quantity of the available data. Increasingly, this will provide a more location-specific indication of nutrient use efficiency and help identify where there is an excess of nutrients leading to environmental risks.
Moving to localized prediction models for crop nutrient removal will also be useful for agronomists advising farmers on increasing their crop production and reducing nutrient losses on their own land.
What’s to come?
The past year has witnessed remarkable progress and significant contributions to the open data crop nutrition platform, bringing forth numerous benefits for the agricultural industry as a whole. The open database has become one of the largest crop nutrient databases globally. Moving forward, the collaboration between IFA, Agmatix, CPCN, and other organizations will focus on expanding and enhancing existing thematic databases, creating new ones on sustainable plant nutrition, and promoting data sharing among public sector researchers and private companies. The involvement of contributors such as Anglo American and the International Potash Institute has demonstrated the potential of open data sharing, but much more is still possible and desirable. The collaboration with the FAO-led Crop Nutrient Budget database will continue so that more reliable quantification of nutrient budgets and nutrient use efficiency can be done, which is also important for tracking progress towards global sustainability targets at national to global level. The open data platform will empower researchers, analysts, agronomists and policymakers to develop data-driven solutions and policies for precision crop nutrition, as a key factor for the sustainable intensification of agriculture.
- Cameron I. Ludemann, Renske Hijbeek, Marloes P. van Loon, T. Scott Murrell, Achim Dobermann, Martin K. van Ittersum https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2022.108578