• DEFRA awards £3.3million for major on-farm trial and research project
• Project seeks to significantly reduce UK farmers’ dependence on nitrogen fertilisers
• Origin Fertilisers and Origin Digital to provide prescription nutrition and digital expertise

17 January 2024 | Origin Fertilisers and Origin Digital, both part of Origin Enterprises plc, are pleased to announce their involvement in a major £3.3million DEFRA-funded project that seeks to help UK grassland farmers make game-changing sustainability gains through using less nitrogen fertiliser.

The project, known as ‘NUE-Leg’, aims to use new varieties of clover, prescription nutrition, and digital tools to fix up to 300kg/ha of atmospheric nitrogen in the soil per year, boosting grass growth without farmers needing to apply additional mineral nitrogen fertiliser.

To achieve this, Origin Fertilisers will provide expertise in optimising the essential micronutrients and metallo-catalysts in each field that enable the grass there to capture and use the atmospheric nitrogen made available by the clover legumes.

In the meantime, Origin Digital will create the digital platforms that farmers can use to understand their farm nutrient profiles & requirements, choose the best clover varieties tailored to their soil and farm requirements, and even determine the percentage of clover in their grass through taking a photo on their smartphone.

Devlyn Hardwick, Product Manager at Origin Digital, said:

“Nitrogen fertiliser currently costs UK grassland farmers £904m per year, and generates 1.4m tonnes CO2e annually – so reducing this is a big win both for their wallets and for the environment. By creating digital tools that help farmers apply the advances in prescription fertilisation and clover breeding in a way that’s tailored to their fields, we can support them to get the nitrogen their grass needs from the air instead, as well as saving them time by automating the fertiliser planning and monitoring their clover content from their phone.”

Peter Scott, Technical Director at Origin Fertilisers, said:

“A key part of the project is to identify the specific nutritional requirements of these new legumes and to develop prescription nutrition programmes using Origin’s Nutri-Match service. For example, micronutrients are essential in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by legumes, and we will be developing metallo-catalysts to optimise this process.

“Nutrients such as phosphate, potassium, sulphur, calcium and magnesium are incredibly important to plant growth and development, and the most deficient nutrient will always be the limiting factor to a crop’s potential. As the sole fertiliser business in the project, our role is to understand where these deficiencies and nutrient limitations are, and correct them by providing balanced and tailored advice to supply the crops with a rounded nutrient profile. For example, sulphur is key to protein formation and increasing nitrogen utilisation, so even though the crop is using a different source of nitrogen, it still requires sulphur to maximise it.”

The NUE-Leg project has drawn together scientific expertise and global leaders in plant breeding and soil microbiology, agronomy, carbon emissions and the farming and food supply chain.