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Just Enough Food Takes Root in the Farm BeltFarmers like to farm. In fact they love to farm and grow as much food as they can on the land. This tempts them to use lots of fertilizer. Plants on the other hand have a very strict regimen. They will take in just the nutrients they need from the soil and no more. The result is that any excess fertilizer gets washed off the soil and into surface waters such as streams and lakes. This then causes algal growth and other consequential damage to the waterways onshore and offshore.Jonathan Lynch of Pennsylvania State University has derived a modified form of phosphorus fertilizer that relies on equilibrium processes. Consider that the plant in full nutrition is a product. Fertilizer plus under fed plants are the reactants. If the fertilizer granules only release the phosphorus fertilizer when the plant is underfed, the system will always maintain just exactly the right balance or equilibrium position. What a clever approach to fertilizer application. Lynch and his coworkers sense the plant status indirectly. The phosphorus fertilizer granules are made of aluminum oxide particles coated with a phosphorus compound that binds to the oxide. The amount of phosphorus released by the granules depends on how much phosphorus is already present in the soils. They have used an understanding of equilibrium to perfectly regulate the amount of phosphorus released into the soil. This is a dirt cheap way to solve the fertilizer run off problem using straightforward application of equilibrium principles.
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