Testing your soils or crops to see if they contain enough nutrients before applying fertilisers must be the way forward. Does your oilseed rape need a tonic? Find outwith some new tests that will determine whether you need more sulphur, or perhaps less phosphate on youe oilseed rape crops. According to the Sulphur Institute, for every pound you spend on sulphur fertiliser in deficient situations, you can recoup 15-18 pound. The extra margin over cost for an average UK crop amounts to about 62 pound/ha. There's such a large response to sulphur fertiliser in oilseed rape that it's almost worth putting some on every crop, says sulphur guru, Professor Steve McGrath of IACR Rothamsted. But a new S deficiency test which measures malate, developed by hiscolleague, Dr Mechteld Blake-Kalff, will ensure that no money is wasted on unnecessary applications.
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