How the International Standard for Controlled-Release Fertilizers Came to Be: Led by China
Editor's Note: Recently, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) officially promulgated the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers led by China. Jointly formulated by the Shanghai Research Institute of Chemical Industry, Kingenta Group, Shandong Agricultural University and other institutions, this international standard fills the gap that until now there had been no unified global standard for controlled-release fertilizers, becoming a "gold standard" in the world's controlled-release fertilizer field. This move is of great significance for standardizing and promoting the healthy development of the global controlled-release fertilizer industry and for enhancing China's international voice in the fertilizer industry. Today this newspaper will tell readers the tortuous story behind China's formulation of the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers, as well as the journey of our country's researchers and industry-leading enterprises devoting themselves to research, breaking through foreign technological barriers, and achieving a leap in the controlled-release fertilizer field from technological backwardness to world leadership.
"In September 2012, at the Washington conference in the United States, we formally proposed the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers. After the proposal, the debate was quite fierce. Foreign experts said, how many years has your country been doing controlled-release fertilizer? Whether you can even produce it now is still a question." Liu Gang, a firsthand witness to China's leadership in formulating the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers and director of the Testing Center of the Shanghai Research Institute of Chemical Industry, still recalls the scene during the standard application stage vividly.
Recently, at the "Symposium on the Promulgation and Implementation of the International Standard for Controlled-Release Fertilizers" co-hosted in Beijing by the Shanghai Research Institute of Chemical Industry, the Slow/Controlled Release Fertilizer Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance, the National Engineering Research Center for Slow/Controlled Release Fertilizers, and Kingenta Group, experts and scholars who personally participated in the formulation of this international standard recounted the difficult and tortuous process from application to final approval. From this one can see the fierce contest among countries over the making of the "rules of the game." On this special battlefield, filled with the smoke of gunpowder, every country goes all out to seize the international voice in the industry, but the final victor is certain to be the king with the greatest strength in research and industry.
Liu Gang explained that before proposing the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers, China had already done a great deal of work on slow/controlled release fertilizers. "For example, the 2009 national standard for 'Slow Release Fertilizers' and the 2012 industry standard for 'Controlled Release Fertilizers' were both jointly formulated by the Shanghai Research Institute of Chemical Industry, Kingenta Group, Shandong Agricultural University and others."
"However, some foreigners' understanding of China's chemical fertilizer industry still remained at the level of the 1970s and 1980s. When the international standard was first proposed, their first reaction was, can you even do this? They raised objections without even looking at the indicators, especially the United States and Canada, who had originally intended to lead the formulation of the international standard themselves," said Chen Hongkun, vice president of Kingenta Group and a major participant in this international standard.
It is understood that Kingenta Group is a leading enterprise in China's research, development and production of high-tech fertilizers. The group attaches great importance to independent research and development of new fertilizers. As early as 2006 it had mastered the core key technologies of controlled-release fertilizer and built the world's largest slow/controlled release fertilizer production base, ranking first in the world in production and sales for 7 consecutive years, and its current market value ranks first among all listed chemical fertilizer companies nationwide.
In 2010, Kingenta Group led the establishment of the Slow/Controlled Release Fertilizer Industry Technology Innovation Alliance, and in 2012 it built the National Engineering Research Center for Slow/Controlled Release Fertilizers. The group has undertaken many national tasks, including the "11th Five-Year Plan" and "12th Five-Year Plan" national science and technology programs for slow/controlled release fertilizers, released a white paper on the development of the slow/controlled release fertilizer industry, and has successively won 2 National Science and Technology Progress Awards.
What Kingenta implements is a strategy of technological innovation and standard leadership. Chen Hongkun explained that Kingenta attaches great importance to the formulation of standards. Starting in 2007 it participated in the formulation of industry standards for slow/controlled release fertilizers and obtained a large amount of analytical testing data, and afterwards it participated throughout the drafting and formulation of the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers.
Before the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers was issued, countries basically relied on enterprise standards, and the international standard had always been a blank. "Enterprise standards are all confidential. I remember very clearly that when China exported controlled-release fertilizer to Germany, whether the test result was qualified or not was entirely up to them to say; they never said what testing method was used," Liu Gang said.
In fact, for many years China had been striving to participate in formulating the international standard for controlled-release fertilizers, but had never been able to squeeze in. "There is a precondition for formulating an international standard: at least 5 or more countries must agree to participate in the formulation of the standard before the standard can be established as a project. If there are fewer than 5 countries, the standard cannot be established as a project. So during the project establishment process we did a great deal of work, and in the end 7 countries expressed willingness to participate in the formulation of the controlled-release fertilizer standard led by China."
The standard formulation could now be established as a project, but after the working draft NWD was proposed in June 2013, many developed countries internationally raised doubts. According to Liu Gang, these countries questioned what work China had done and what qualifications it had to formulate the standard. "In fact, some international fertilizer production enterprises did not understand just what scale China's controlled-release fertilizer had reached. When I talked with them, I said Kingenta's production scale was 300,000 to 400,000 tons. They laughed and said the whole world combined does not exceed 1 million tons, and China combined would be doing well to have 500,000 tons. In fact, Kingenta can produce 2,000 tons in a single day, and its actual production capacity is 600,000 tons. So through this standard formulation, international peers also gained a completely new understanding of China's fertilizer industry."
Next, in October 2013 China formally submitted the working draft CD, and in December the CD draft was voted on. "The final vote was held in March 2014. By then there were already 21 members; many countries became interested and successively joined in to become countries with voting rights. At that time the situation was very grim: of the 21 countries, only 10 voted in favor, not more than half. The debate in the meeting hall was very fierce. I worried whether this standard could still go ahead," Liu Gang recalled. After the meeting, China's standard-formulating side and representatives of various countries carried out a great deal of communication work. "We translated China's standards into English for them to see, and only then did they realize that as early as 2009 China already had a national standard for slow/controlled release fertilizers."
In fact, controlled-release fertilizer is a new type of intelligent, environmentally friendly fertilizer. It is a cutting-edge technology based on the patterns of plants' demand for nutrients, applying modern plant nutrition theory and jointly controlling the release of nutrients. Controlled-release fertilizer uses coating materials of different properties. This high-tech coating is covered with nanoscale micropores. These micropores are like little "switches," regulating the amount of fertilizer nutrients released in the soil and the period of fertilizer efficacy, so that the supply of nutrients can be synchronized with the fertilizer demand for crop growth and development. When plants need large amounts of nutrition during their vigorous growth period, the little "switches" open to control the release of more nutrient elements; when plants do not need too much nutrition during their slow growth period, the little "switches" close, thereby reducing the release of nutrient elements.