China Advances Fertilizer Efficiency Enhancement with Technological Innovation

National Bureau of Statistics data shows that China’s annual agricultural chemical fertilizer usage (converted to pure) reached 49.88 million tons in 2024, maintaining a downward trend for nine consecutive years but still accounting for about one-third of the global total. Meanwhile, China’s comprehensive fertilizer utilization rate is only about 40%, much lower than that of developed countries, leading to resource waste and environmental pollution.

On the other hand, microbial fertilizers have entered a period of rapid growth in recent years. By 2025, their annual output had exceeded 40 million tons, with a cumulative application area of over 500 million mu nationwide. However, the biggest problem of microbial fertilizers is unstable effectiveness, which has reduced users’ trust. Enhancing efficiency has become the main theme for both chemical and microbial fertilizers.

Fertilizer efficiency enhancers refer to a general term for non-plant mineral nutrition and non-hormonal substances added to fertilizers to improve nutrient supply, promote plant absorption, or regulate soil microbial and enzyme activity. To ensure the quality and safety of crops, China issued national technical standards for the detection of plant growth regulators in fertilizers between 2019 and 2023, driving the development of new-type fertilizer efficiency enhancers.

China National Radio reports that the utilization rate of chemical fertilizers for China’s three major grain crops reached 43.3% in 2025, an increase of 3.1 percentage points from 2020, entering the international upper-middle level range of 40% to 50%. Despite this progress, the current efficiency enhancers still face challenges such as unreasonable dosage and weak efficacy, creating an urgent market demand for new products that are low-dose, high-efficiency, crop-safe and capable of systematic regulation.

Liang Zhenpu, Professor of Henan Agricultural University, doctoral supervisor and Director of Henan Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center for Microbial Fertilizers, proposed the "Plant Rhizosphere Information Network System" theory internationally for the first time. Based on years of research on microbe-plant interaction mechanisms, he developed a series of new fertilizer efficiency enhancers through engineering bacteria construction and microbial synthetic biology technology.

These products, named the "Lianmi" series, include root-promoting and seedling-strengthening agents, flower and fruit retention agents, fruit swelling and color-changing agents, and stress resistance inducers. They feature micro-dosage, high efficiency, safety, quick effect and wide applicability. Demonstration applications in multiple provinces show that with a 10% reduction in chemical fertilizer usage, crops still achieve significant yield increases and improved quality and stress resistance.

"We hope to redefine the value of fertilizer efficiency enhancers with technological logic—not simply adding value to fertilizers, but multiplying the benefits for agriculture," said Liang Zhenpu. This technological innovation marks a transformation from "single efficiency enhancement" to "systematic regulation" in the fertilizer industry, providing solid scientific and technological support for China’s green and sustainable agricultural development.