Mineral sources of potassium for plant nutrition. A review

Recently published assessments of nutrient budgets on a national basis have shown that K deficits for developing countries are so substantial that a doubling of world production of potash fertilisers would be required to balance inputs and offtake, simply to meet demands in Africa alone. The price of potassium fertiliser raw materials has increased by a factor of 4 during 2007–2009, approaching $1000 per tonne in some markets. Thus an annual investment of the order of US$5600 million is required to replenish soil K stocks in Africa. In this context it is appropriate to review current knowledge of alternative sources of K, which is the seventh most abundant element in the Earth’s continental crust, present in feldspars and (much less commonly) feldspathoid minerals including nepheline and leucite. Theoretical considerations based on the experimental determination of mineral dissolution rates indicate that nepheline dissolves 100 times more quickly than potassium feldspar, and this suggests that nepheline-bearing rocks are more effective as sources of K for plant growth than granitic rocks, even though these have higher K contents. Crop trials with silicate rocks and minerals as sources of K show increased K availability and uptake for nepheline-bearing rocks compared with granitic rocks. Under conditions where soils are rapidly leached (especially tropical soils such as oxisols that contain quartz, aluminium oxy-hydroxides and kaolinite), with low capacity to retain soluble nutrients, the use of potassium feldspar or crushed granite does give a yield response, although no greater than for conventional fertilisers. In other experiments with crushed ultramafic, basaltic and andesitic rocks improvements in crop yield are claimed, although this cannot be unambiguously related to the mineralogical or chemical composition of the rock used. In conclusion, the present high cost of conventional potassium fertilisers justifies further investigation of potassium silicate minerals and their host rocks (which in some cases include basic rocks, such as basalt) as alternative sources of K, especially for systems with highly weathered soils that lack a significant cation exchange capacity. Such soils commonly occur in developing countries, and so this approach provides an opportunity to develop indigenous silicate rock sources of K as an alternative to sometimes prohibitively expensive commercial fertilisers.