Does fertilizer mixing enhance nutrient availability or poison plant-soil ecosystems?
Résumé
Fertilizer mixing the simultaneous or sequential co-application of two or more fertilizer types is a fundamental yet underexamined practice in global agriculture. While mixing strategies can unlock synergistic nutrient interactions and sustain food production for a growing global population, they also carry latent risks including soil acidification, heavy metal accumulation, microbial community disruption, and nutrient antagonism. This systematic review follows the PRISMA 2020 framework to synthesize evidence from 94 primary studies and meta-analyses published between 2015 and 2026. A structured database search in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar yielded 2,847 initial records 94 eligible studies were retained after full-text screening. Evidence was synthesized across five thematic domains: (i) nutrient availability and crop yield responses; (ii) nutrient synergism and antagonism; (iii) soil physicochemical property changes; (iv) soil microbial community dynamics; and (v) ecotoxicological and water quality impacts. The study found that organic–inorganic combinations and balanced NPK applications predominantly enhanced nutrient use efficiency (NUE) and crop yields, with combined organic–inorganic fertilization increasing maize grain yield by 22–54% over mineral fertilizer alone and improving soil fertility indices by 13–40% over inorganic NPK alone. But also, we found that excessive or imbalanced applications lead to soil acidification (mean pH reduction of 0.26 units globally from N addition alone), suppress soil microbial diversity, and facilitate cadmium and other heavy metal accumulation through repeated phosphate fertilizer inputs. Enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) found to be robust mitigation strategy capable of synchronizing nutrient release with crop demand. The study provides dual-evidence framework to guide evidence-based fertilizer mixing recommendations that maximize agronomic benefits while safeguarding plant–soil ecosystem integrity.
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