Publications

4R Plant Nutrition: A Manual for Improving the Management of Plant Nutrition

4R Nutrient Stewardship is a new innovative approach for fertilizer best management practices adopted by the world’s fertilizer industry. This approach considers economic, social, and environmental dimensions of nutrient management and is essential to sustainability of agricultural systems. The concept is simple–apply the right source of nutrient, at the right rate, at the right time, and in the right place–but the implementation is knowledge-intensive and site-specific. The 4R Plant Nutrition Manual is a wiro bound, 130 page (8½ x 11 in.) book filled with illustrations, learning modules, and case studies. The manual’s initial release will be as a North American version.

Africa Plant Nutrition Research Highlights

Africa Plant Nutrition Research Highlights publishes highlights from research articles related to plant nutrition research in Africa to promote sharing and exchange of information on sustainable crop production intensification in Africa.

Better Crops With Plant Food

Few publications available today can claim the longevity of Better Crops with Plant Food (BC), the quarterly publication of IPNI. The magazine originated in 1923. It's not easy to describe this unique magazine. With an identity somewhere between an agronomic research journal and a marketing information series, BC provides a steady vehicle for reporting news from research related to nutrient management. While constantly evolving to serve its target audiences, the magazine also serves as a mirror of the agronomic research and education programs of the Institute.

Better Crops China (BCC)

Established in 1998, Better Crops China (BCC) is a fully Chinese language publication from IPNI China Program. It is now released twice annually every May and October. BCC is written in Chinese language to promote good agronomic practices - proper and efficient use of inorganic fertilizer with economic and environmental considerations. The regular issue has a circulation of over 8,000 copies distributed throughout China. There is no charge for this technical publication.

Better Crops South Asia

Following a similar style as our popular quarterly publication, Better Crops with Plant Food, this new publication (formerly Better Crops India) is the result of considerable effort by the IPNI South Asia Programme Staff: Dr. K. Majumdar and Dr. T. Satyanarayana. In these pages, you will learn of the many challenges and opportunities as well as the notable progress related to crop production, more balanced fertilization, and best/beneficial management practices related to nutrient use in South Asia.

Catalog of Publications

Catalog of educational materials from the International Plant Nutrition Institute. The catalog is complete with order forms and instructions on ordering from IPNI.

CCA - Preparing for the International Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) Exam

The Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) Exam is based on performance objectives which can be thought of as areas of expertise that a CCA should possess. The purpose of this manual is to provide information on each of these performance objectives which will be helpful in preparation for the CCA Exam. The manual is updated each time the CCA Exam is revised.

Cereal Crops: Guide to Identifying and Managing Nutrient Deficiencies in Cereal Crops

A new booklet has been developed by the IPNI South Asia Program in cooperation with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). It is a 50-page field guide (8 1/2 x 11 in. size, wire-o bound) designed to describe the underlying causes of nutrient deficiencies in maize, wheat, rice, sorghum, pearl millet, and barley, with tips on how they might be prevented or remedied. Hundreds of excellent deficiency photographs provided by the authors and IPNI will allow the user of this field guide to understand the development of nutrient deficiency symptoms through the growth stages of the crop.

Crop Nutrient Deficiency Image Collection

The images are organized in groups including primary nutrients, secondary nutrients, and micronutrients. The image galleries and search results can be narrowed by available crop-type. Text and diagrammatic descriptions of nutrient deficiency are also available as supporting information.

Crop Nutrient Deficiency Photo Library App for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch

A comprehensive collection of crop nutrient deficiency photos. A range of nutrient deficiency examples are provided for 14 prominent crops. Text and diagrammatic descriptions are also provided. The app can be downloaded and viewed on iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch devices.

Education Packet

A wonderful assortment of materials for young people. An activity book with teacher’s guide for K-3 grade and 11 full color booklets for grades 4-8. Each book focuses on NPK, gives a scientific approach, and can be used successfully in the classroom for plant nutrient instruction.

Enviro-Briefs

Take a closer look at the relationship between agriculture and the environment in this series. These short articles present important facts and observations on the interaction among crop production, nutrients, and the Earth's air, water, and soil resources. Consumers, students, agronomists, farmers, and all who are interested in the environment will find this series informative and easy to read.

Fertilizing Crops to Improve Human Health: A Scientific Review

Since 1948, World Health Organization has defined human health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." A large proportion of humanity depends for its sustenance on the food production increases brought about through the application of fertilizers to crops. Fertilizer contributes to both the quantity and quality of the food produced. Used in the proper way-applying the right source at the right rate, time and place-and on the right crops, it contributes immensely to the health and well-being of humanity. Therefore, sustainable agricultural development and sustainable fertilizer use must increasingly focus on nourishing human health, towards a goal of healthy and productive lives for all in the context of a burgeoning world population. While the current role of fertilizers in supporting human health is large, the opportunities to expand it even further are also substantial. The International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) and International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA) have joined hands to produce a Scientific Review on Fertilizing Crops to Improve Human Health, which is comprised of 11 chapters within three themed sections: Food and Nutrition Security, Functional Foods, and Risk Reduction.

Frontiers in Potassium Nutrition

This 174-page, 20-chapter publication includes papers from a 1996 symposium sponsored by PPI-PPIC and the American Society of Agronomy. The first section covers basic perspectives focusing on how potassium movement across plant cell membranes and within the plant is both facilitated and regulated and also how potassium status interacts with basic aspects of cell function. The second section focuses on developing a new and fuller understanding of how potassium nutrition and cultural management interact with crop plant performance and quality factors.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Cropping Systems and the Influence of Fertilizer Management

A firm scientific understanding is needed about fertilizer nitrogen (N) use effects on the emissions of the three gases (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane) considered to be the major agricultural contributors to what is often referred to as "the greenhouse effect". Scientific staff of the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) have prepared a literature review to extend information that will lead to a better understanding of fertilizer N management practices that minimize global warming potential. The document contains over 30 pages of text, data, and a listing of more than 130 references on this topic.

Informaciones Agronómicas de Hispanoamérica (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay)

A quarterly magazine where you can find technical information about the management and dynamics of N, P, K, S and other nutrients in farming systems of the region.

Informaciones Agronómicas de Hispanoamérica (Northern Latin America, Mexico and Central America)

A quarterly magazine where you can find technical information about the management and dynamics of N, P, K, S and other nutrients in farming systems of the region. (Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua)

Informações Agronômicas (Brasil)

A quarterly magazine where you can find technical information about the management and dynamics of N, P, K, S and other nutrients in farming systems of the region.

International version of the Soil Fertility Manual

This manual contains the topics covered in the North American version, as well as additional information on tropical crops and soils. Rates, yields and other units of measure are presented in metrics. This 114-page, 10-chapter publication is GBC-bound. It is a practical and useful publication discussing the major, secondary and micronutrients, along with soil testing, plant analysis, diagnostic techniques and more.

IPNI Insights

IPNI Insights is a regional newsletter published by the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI).

Managing Crop Nitrogen for Weather

The weather controls a great deal of the crop response to nitrogen. The contents of a new publication titled Managing Crop Nitrogen for Weather, based on the proceedings of a symposium at the 2006 meeting of the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), provide details of experimental data and experiences of those engaged in efforts to improve prediction of crop nitrogen needs in response to weather conditions.

Manual Internacional de Fertilidade do Solo - 2ª edição, revisada e ampliada

Essa publicação é o resultado da excelente tradução do texto original a língua portuguesa feita pelo Dr. Alfredo Scheid Lopes. Além das adaptações às nossas condições de clima e solo, Prof. Lopes incluiu notas explicativas, novos conceitos visuais e apêndice com definições de conceitos, níveis de fertilidade do solo e tabelas caracterizando os fertilizantes e calcários de acordo com a legislação vigente no país.

Mathematics and Calculations for Agronomists and Soil Scientists (British Imperical)

A Guide to Converting Biologically-Based Data into Economically and Scientifically-Based Practical Solutions The overall goal of this manual is to teach individuals - whether students or working professionals - how to propose, test, and implement innovative strategies that increase productivity while also protecting the environment.

Mathematics and Calculations for Agronomists and Soil Scientists (METRIC)

A Guide to Converting Biologically-Based Data into Economically and Scientifically-Based Practical Solutions The overall goal of this manual is to teach individuals - whether students or working professionals - how to propose, test, and implement innovative strategies that increase productivity while also protecting the environment.

N Cycle Game

A wonderful game for everyone to learn how nitrogen cycles in the ecosystem, i.e., how nitrogen gets in to the soil, how it is used by plants, and how it is lost.

Nutrient Source Specifics (English)

Nutrient Source Specifics are one-page fact sheets highlighting various fertilizers and nutrient sources. Written by IPNI scientific staff, these items are primarily for educational use by a non-technical audience. Consult with a local expert regarding specific recommendations on nutrient use.

Nutrient Source Specifics (Chinese)

是用一页纸简要清晰地介绍现代农业中常用肥料品种的生产、化学性质和农用措施。这些材料由国际植物营养研究所（IPNI）的科学家们撰写，是对非专业技术人员进行教育和培训的优质教材

Oil Palm Series - Field Handbook: Immature

Handbook for personnel in charge of plantation development. Includes guidelines on land preparation for planting (surveying, land clearing, platform construction, legume cover) and procedures for immature maintenance (weeding, nutrient management and census activities).

Oil Palm Series - Field Handbook: Nursery

Handbook for personnel in charge of nursery management. Includes specific instructions and information on site selection and preparation, irrigation, transplanting, monitoring seedling performance and deficiency symptoms.

Oil Palm Series - Pocket Guide: Immature

This pocket-sized edition of the Immature Handbook contains all relevant information needed by field staff to implement best management practices related to land preparation for planting and procedures for immature maintenance.

Oil Palm Series - Pocket Guide: Mature

This pocket-sized edition of the Immature Handbook contains all relevant information needed by field staff to implement best management practices in mature plantings.

Oil Palm Series - Pocket Guide: Nursery

This pocket-sized edition of the Nursery Handbook contains all relevant information needed by field staff to implement best management practices in oil palm nurseries.

Oil Palm Series - Poster: Nutrient Deficiency Symptoms in Oil Palm

Poster with pictures for the identification of nutrient deficiency symptoms in oil palm including brief descriptions of likely environments in which they occur.

Oil Palm Series: Management for Large and Sustainable Yields

The advent of precision agriculture and new oil palm planting materials have made it necessary to provide planters with the latest information on oil palm management. This book provides an in-depth discussion on every aspect of oil palm management — from botany to nutritional needs, from managing the canopy to precision management using GIS.

Oil Palm Series: Mature

Handbook for personnel in charge of operations in mature plantings. Topics cover harvesting and delivery efficiency, weeding, nutrient management, mulching with empty fruit bunches, canopy management and pruning, and to a lesser extend pest and diseases.

Oil Palm Series: Nutrient Disorders and Nutrient Management

Pocket guide providing essential and up-to-date information on leaf sampling, quantitative surveys on deficiency symptoms, and other important guidelines related to nutrient management. Includes a large annex with pictures of nutrient deficiency symptoms.

Plant Food Uptake Pocket Cards

Handy, pocket-size cards list nutrient needs of crops at various yield levels and the amounts removed in crop harvest. Indicate your choice by region. (North America)

Plant Nutrient Use in North American Agriculture

A new publication available from PPI reviews current information on nutrient sources...both organic and inorganic. PPI/PPIC/FAR Technical Bulletin 2002-1 discusses the differences and similarities, advantages and disadvantages, relative abundance or scarcity, and amounts of plant nutrients required to produce today’s food demands. Estimated availability of organic and inorganic fertilizers, management challenges of each source, potential effects on the environment, and how that concern can be managed are also addressed. The publication contains 100+ pages in 10 chapters and appendices.

Plant Nutrition Today

Posters on Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and Sulfur

Four new colorful 18 x 24-inch posters printed on glossy paper illustrating the foods we need to eat to provide our bodies with N, P, K, and S are now available from IPNI. These posters demonstrate how closely aligned the foods we eat are to the nutrients plants require to thrive.

Rice Series - Poster: Nutrient Disorders in Rice

Poster with pictures for the identification of nutrient deficiency symptoms in rice including brief descriptions of likely environments in which they occur.

Rice Series: Rice - A Practical Guide to Nutrient Management

Since its first introduction in 2002, this Practical Guide became the standard referece for developing site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) recommendations in irrigated and favorable rainfed rice. The SSNM approach has been successfully evaluated in a wide range of farmers' fields in Asia and is now promoted by national agencies in many Asian countries. The Guide includes a large annex with pictures of nutrient deficiency symptoms.

Russian Newsletter

Site-Specific Management Guidelines

The objective of the Site-Specific Management Guidelines series is to provide a mechanism to assemble expert knowledge in a timely fashion on site-specific management in a form useful to farmers and their advisers. Each Guideline addresses a specific issue related to site-specific soil and crop management. Currently there are 45 titles in the series, which can be accessed from the list below.

Soil Fertility Manual

The SOIL FERTILITY MANUAL, first published by PPI in 1978, was revised and updated in 2003. It still features the basic principles of soil/plant relationships and fertilizer/aglime use. The Manual serves as a practical and modern resource on soil fertility, including the primary and secondary nutrients and micronutrients, soil sampling and testing, plant analysis, other diagnostic techniques and more. The publication now contains 11 chapters, plus a glossary and new appendix sections containing tables of conversions and reference lists, and color photos of various nutrient deficiency symptoms in crops. The new version also has an index of topics. The presentation style of the manual continues to be practical and easy-to-grasp, making it adaptable to use by agronomists, farm advisers, students, farmers, and others...suitable for classroom use, meetings, and individual study.

Soil Fertility Manual - Video Presentations on CD

Topics included in the IPNI Soil Fertiity Manual (SFM) are addressed through presentations on this CD (Windows Media Player Format). Originally recorded in VHS format, the presentations by IPNI scientific staff follow the general subject sequence of the current SFM.

Soil Fertility Series: Management of Soil Fertility in Acid, Upland Soils (Soil Fertility Kit)

Deforestation, resulting soil erosion, and poor crop management are the major causes of land degradation. Soil is the farmer's basic resource, and thus, soil fertility is a key determinant in human development. This book presents the important concepts of soil fertility management in an easy-to-understand format. Full-color photographs, tables and charts are used throughout the book so that readers can quickly grasp the underlying principles of soil fertility.

Soil Test Levels in North America

With the cooperation of numerous public and private soil testing laboratories, IPNI periodically summarizes data on soil test levels in North America (NA). The 2010 summary contains information about phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulfur (S), magnesium (Mg), zinc (Zn), chloride (Cl-), and pH. This summary can be viewed as an indicator of the nutrient supplying capacity or fertility of soils in NA. This is the tenth summary completed by the Institute, with the fi rst dating back to the 1960s. The summary offers a snapshot view of soil test levels in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, but also provides a comparison to the previous two summaries which were completed in 2001 and 2005. Since the 2010 summary is the third in which laboratories were asked to contribute complete frequency distributions of soil test results, temporal changes in soil test level distributions can be viewed for the second time for states and provinces.

Southeast Asia Newsletter

View the latest information on recent activities of the Southeast Asia Program.

Southern Forages

The book Southern Forages was first introduced in 1991 and has since gained wide recognition as a practical and reliable source of information on modern forage crop management. The Fourth Edition of Southern Forages, released in February, 2007, is an even more valuable book, with extensive chapter revisions, topic updates, and other improvements.

Specialty Coffee: Managing Quality

The more we searched for information on coffee quality, the more we realized that a superb cup of coffee depends on a complex of processes along the supply chain that allows little margin for error at any stage. Furthermore, as so often occurs when personal preferences and tastes are involved in defining quality, the process of producing magnificent coffees is as much an art as a science. Consequently, as we developed this book, we tried to combine hard science with art and put it into a business context: the result is a book with a wide range of styles. This book is neither a blueprint nor a recipe for specialty coffee production. Our intention is to provide information and ideas that stimulate and support creative thinking that can provide the basis for developing and adjusting the myriad processes and details of the specialty coffee supply chains that produce a multitude of coffees with distinctive traits from a diverse range of origins.

Sugarcane Nutrition

This field book is intended to provide a guide to identification of essential and functional plant nutrient disorders in sugarcane. It is directed toward the sugarcane farmer, research scientist, Extension specialist, student, and consultant. Printed on synthetic paper, this book is moisture and mildew resistant. It is spiral bound for use in the field.

The Right Way to Grow Wheat…4R Nutrient Stewardship

“The Right Way to Grow Wheat…4R Nutrient Stewardship” is a separate video which runs more than 8 minutes and specifically addresses the economic, environmental, and social goals of sustainable agricultural systems needed to meet global demand for wheat. As a staple in almost all human diets, additional wheat production will be needed in the future to help feed rapidly growing populations. 4R nutrient stewardship is focused on four central components: applying the right fertilizer source at the right rate, at the right time in the growing season, and in the right place. Each of the four “rights” is directly related to the other three in at least one way, interconnected into a unified, effective system.

The Right Way to Grow…4R Nutrient Stewardship

This video runs more than 11 minutes and gives an overview of the 4Rs. It explains how the concept can apply to large-scale agriculture in developed countries and also to small-holder farms in less developed regions. Through graphics and field scenes, the presentation provides more insight for further understanding of the 4Rs.

Videos