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How can we simplify integrated fertilizer management as a means to sustainable agriculture? Herein a sort of "White Paper" describing the rationale & positioning of Polyor SAS's AgroNum concept. Yours to see ... in either English or French.

Sustainable agriculture involves innovative inputs. How can these innovations be assayed on-farm? Cf. Recent on-farm experimentation, OFE, reviews by Lacoste et al. 2022 and Cho et al. 2021. These OFEs involve some sort of control vs treated strip-plot comparison. How revolutionary is this mere transposition of experimental protocols on-farm? A radical approach would be to do away with cumbersome control & treated plots.

Sustainable-agriculture occurs is long-term. Nitrogen-fertilizer response curves from long-term experiments (LTE) for cereal & other non-leguminous field-crops reflect this.

How can we benchmark sustainable cropping-practices? One way would be to eliminate the risk of residual post-harvent N-loss due to low N-fertilizer use efficiencies (NUE), AND the risk of "soil minining" due to excesively high NUEs than tend to deprive crop residues of N needed for their humification into stable soil organic-matter.

Grain-nitrogen offtake with 0 N-fertilization is a measure of soil fertility and a function of non-symbiotic nitrogen fixation, azb. If this basal level of azb can be increased in the presence of crop residue, this supplementary N will contribute to grain yields regardless of added N-fertilizer later in the season. Polyor SAS's azotobacterial fertilization, AZB™, is a key component of integrated fertilizer management implemented using AgroNum™.

Sustainable agriculture & soil organic matter conservation vis integrated fertilizer management (ifm) is all about greater precision & accuracy. AgroNum sets sustainable target grain-nitrogen yields (RDN) and N-fertilizer recommendations (TUN). Polyor SAS also developed field & crop sampling protocols to manage inputs with greater precision when complying with these sustainable target yields and N-fertilizer recommendations, albeit very catered to azotobacterial fertilization, AZB™.

Could soil organic matter conservation as means to sustainable agriculture be this simple ? N-inputs from crop residues need to be proportional to N-offtake from grain yield. Doing so, will insure that crop residues are sufficiently N-rich to be properly humified into stable soil organic matter.

On-farm experimentation is great. But how percise are routine evaluation of innovative treatment effects on yield ? Polyor SAS's AI approach to agricultural consultancy - AgroNum determines treatment effects (eTRT) ... without the use of cumbersome non-treated control strip-plots or sampling. Nitrogen-fertilizer response curves generated at the plot level (EP2210746.8) are used to further adjust N-fertilizer recommendations.

Why is non-symbiotic, free-living, aka azotobacterial (AZB), nitrogen fixation under-estimated in agriculture? May have to do with inadequate soil phosphorus availability. Polyor SAS has since proposed a simple way of increasing AZB in field-crop production by applying minute amounts of P directly to soil-borne crop residues.

Agro-ecological characterization of land suitability as means to sustainable agriculture was in the works 30 years ago. Polyor SAS's AgroNum approach to integrated fertilizer management links such databases & innovative N-fertilizer response curves that can now be used routinely for the sustainable development of non-Fabaceae field-crops.

L'intelligence artificielle transforme une démarche complexe, par exemple le calcul d'objectifs de rendements durables (RDN) de grandes cultures agronomiques - céréales, maïs, etc., en quelques choses de très simple. AgroNum a été conçu en ce sens. AgroNum est complémentaire - mais aussi en rupture, avec bon nombre d'approches d'agriculture de précision, de fertilisation raisonnée ou encore de micro-climatologie.

Sustainable agriculture & soil conservation in field-crop production is also all about reducing yield gaps. Schils et al. 2018 were quite explicite in that respect. Polyor SAS's AgroNum approach to setting sustainable cereal target yields & N-fertilizer recommendations is a means to that end. As compared to conventional regional yield-averages, AgroNum sustainable target grain & nitrogen yields are on average & 70% of the time, higher.