Abstract
Compost represents an important input for sustainable agriculture, but the use of diverse compost types causes uncertain outcomes. Here we performed a global meta-analysis with over 2,000 observations to determine whether a precision compost strategy (PCS) that aligns suitable composts and application methods with target crops and growth environments can advance sustainable food production. Eleven key predictors of compost (carbon-to-nutrient ratios, pH and salt content electric conductivity), management (nitrogen N supply) and biophysical settings (crop type, soil texture, soil organic carbon, pH, temperature and rainfall) determined 80% of the effect on crop yield, soil organic carbon and nitrous oxide emissions. The benefits of a PCS are more pronounced in drier and warmer climates and soils with acidic pH and sandy or clay texture, achieving up to 40% higher crop yield than conventional practices. Using a data-driven approach, we estimate that a global PCS can increase the production of major cereal crops by 96.3 Tg annually, which is 4% of current production. A global PCS has the technological potential to restore 19.5 Pg carbon in cropland topsoil (0–20 cm), equivalent to 26.5% of current topsoil soil organic carbon stocks. Together, this points to a central role of PCS in current and emerging agriculture.
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Data availability
The global compost effects observation dataset compiled for this study is available in Supplementary Data 1. The global input gridded datasets of climate, soils and fertilization are publicly available and presented in Supplementary Table 11. Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code availability
All codes developed for the BRT and RF analyses and to generate results are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by National Key Technologies R&D Program of China (grant 2016YFD0201303), Green and High-efficiency Fertilizer Innovation Program, Academy of Green Intelligent Compound Fertilizer, CNSIG Anhui Hongsifang Fertilizer Co., Ltd. and Chaohu Lake Non-point Source Pollution Key Technology Research, Construction of agricultural carbon neutrality account in Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province, Agricultural Technology Experiment Demonstration and Service Support Program in 2021, Graduate International Training Program of China Agricultural University, and the ‘Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre’ under funding received from Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program.
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W.Z. conceived the research and established the methodology. W.Z., S.Z. and S.S proposed the PCS concept. S.Z. collected and analysed the data. W.Z., S.Z. and S.S. designed figures and tables. W.Z., S.Z. and S.S. wrote the manuscript with edits from H.G., T.L., X.C., Y.H., D.C., J.T., Z.D. and F.Z.
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The global compost effects observations dataset.
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Zhao, S., Schmidt, S., Gao, H. et al. A precision compost strategy aligning composts and application methods with target crops and growth environments can increase global food production. Nat Food 3, 741–752 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00584-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00584-x
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