What are the main properties and attributes that determine its agronomic value?

The use of fertilizers in Argentina registered remarkable transformations in the last decade, with considerable increases in the global consumption of nutrients and in the development of the product supply chain (Melgar and Torres Duggan, 2005; Melgar, 2006).

The main trends in the fertilizer market are: increase in consumption of physical mixtures and bulk as a way of dispatching solid and liquid products; greater diversity of services offered by supplier companies; emergence of new sources of nutrients and product presentations; development of new agricultural machines suitable for the application of liquid and solid fertilizers.

The appearance of new sources of nutrients generates in many cases some confusion about its agronomic suitability. The rate of their appearance on the market frequently exceeds the agronomic evaluation capacity by official research organizations, determining “gaps” of information regarding the management of these sources.

Also, there is little local information on fertilizer quality assessment issues. The objective of the present work is to characterize the main properties and attributes that determine the valuation agronomy of solid fertilizers, both those of chemical synthesis and those of mineral.