July 5, 2017: Yusuf Nadi Karatay was honored with the "Best oral student communication" award for his presentation on "Economic potential of site-specific N fertilizer application when N supply is restricted" at the 2017 EFITA-WWCA Congress in Montpellier, France.

Yusuf Nadi Karatay is currently researching for his PhD thesis on potentials and costs of GHG mitigation in the context of the Leibniz Graduate School LandPakt. 

In his study, Yusuf Nadi Karatay analyzes how legal restrictions on the amount of nitrogen fertilizer affect the profitability of grain production. He compares site-specific with conventional N-fertilization, which does not adapt the fertilizer dose to small area's specific needs.

In his oral presentation, he showed that when reducing the allowed N application rates by 10, 20 or 30% the benefits of a site-specific fertilization depends mainly on the yield functions of the partial field areas. Under N-limited scenarios, the economic advantage of site-specific fertilizer application decreases with increasing the reduction of fertizer applied. However, site-specific fertilization with limited N-application can offer a relevant economic potential if high wheat quality resulting in a higher product price is realized. Results of the study will soon be published in detail.

The conference was organized by the European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (EFITA) in cooperation with the World Congress on Computers in Agriculture (WCCA). EFITA 2017. It was held July 2-6, 2017 in Montpellier, France.