José Nolasco of Rovensa Next Delves into Nutrient Use Efficiency

AgriBusiness Global: Why has nutrient use efficiency become so essential in agricultural contexts?

José Nolasco: Nutrient-use efficiency (NUE) has become essential because agriculture is under increasing pressure to produce more with fewer and more reliable inputs. Growers today face a combination of rising fertilizer costs, supply instability, and tightening sustainability requirements. These factors are forcing a fundamental shift away from traditional input-heavy models toward more efficient and resilient production systems. At the same time, the efficiency of conventional fertilization systems is still significantly limited. A significant percentage of applied nutrients is lost through leaching, volatilization, and soil fixation, meaning crops can often only harness a fraction of the product that are applied.

For example, more than 80% of the phosphorus cannot be available in the soil depending of pH, organic matter, among other factors. On the other hand, depending on the crop and production system, nitrogen use efficiency is often low with losses that can be estimated around 40–60%.

This inefficient nutrient use translates directly into economic losses and huge environmental impact. Improving NUE therefore represents one of the most relevant opportunities in modern agriculture: maintaining productivity, or even improving it, with fewer inputs. It enables growers to protect profitability, reduce environmental impact, and increase resilience to market and climate volatility.

Importantly, NUE is no longer only a technical objective; it has become a central pillar of sustainable agriculture, recognized globally as key to balancing productivity with resource conservation.

For Rovensa Next, this philosophy is at the core of our call to action in Biosolutionize Agriculture. We use integrated biosolutions to help growers optimize their fertilization strategies, supporting nutrient uptake and utilization, and protecting crop performance under increasingly complex agronomic conditions.

ABG: Can you describe how Rovensa Next’s integrated bionutrition management strategies can help respond to the fertilizer crisis?

Nolasco: Rovensa Next’s approach to the fertilizer crisis is built on a simple but transformative principle: efficiency through integration rather than substitution. Rather than replacing conventional fertilizers with a single alternative, we offer a combination of complementary biosolutions that are designed to support nutrient availability and uptake and help crops perform more efficiently during the key stages of the crop cycle.

This integrated strategy addresses two of the core challenges behind today’s fertilizer crisis — price volatility and supply uncertainty — and it helps growers obtain more value from every unit of nutrient applied. This is achieved by improving root performance, soil vitality, and soil nutrient dynamics; enhancing natural nutrient cycling; and helping plants make better use of the nutrients that are already present in the soil.

This boosts plant metabolism and resilience, unlocking more efficient nutrient use and stronger crop performance even under stress conditions. By combining these levers, Rovensa Next enables growers to maintain performance while adopting more resilient and adaptive nutrition strategies to respond to increasing cost pressure and market volatility.

This integrated model effectively shifts the focus from “how much fertilizer is applied” to “how efficiently nutrients are used,” which is critical in today’s market environment.

ABG: What types of products are included in this integrated management approach? Are there any regions where this approach is most effective?

Nolasco: Our integrated bionutrition management approach includes a broad portfolio of complementary solutions combining different families of products designed to work synergistically across the crop cycle. In this sense, biostimulants are one of our product categories that play a fundamental role enhancing plant physiological processes and abiotic stress tolerance.

But not only this, our biofertilizer range contains beneficial microorganisms designed to support plant nutrition through biological processes, contribute to soil fertility, and help crops make more efficient use of available nutrients. This aspect is key to unlock nutrients present in the soil. Soil management and soil vitality solutions are key in our strategy as well, enhancing soil microbiota and improving the roots and rhizosphere. Finally, a high-performance foliar feeding solution with high leaf uptake completes a solid offer in our integrated approach. Together, these categories create a system level approach to nutrition, not a single-product solution. This is our Biosolucionar la agricultura approach, delivering integrated and science-based programs to create profitable sustainability for distributors and growers.

In terms of geography, this approach is highly versatile. Because it is based on improving biological and physiological processes, it is effective across diverse farming systems, from intensive horticulture to large-scale row crops. That said, it is particularly impactful in regions facing input cost pressure, degraded soils, or water and climate stress, where improving nutrient efficiency delivers the greatest economic and agronomic gains.

ABG: What’s your company’s strategy for helping growers overcome the learning curve when it comes to implementing an integrated bionutrition management strategy?

Nolasco: Rovensa Next recognizes that adopting an integrated approach requires a shift in mindset, from product-based decisions to system-based crop management. The company supports this implementation by focusing on these areas:

• Agronomic expertise and advisory support. Rovensa Next is not just an input supplier; it is a trusted partner, helping growers design tailored bioslutions strategies adapted to their crops, soils, and local conditions.
• Evidence and science-based solutions. Our strategy is underpinned by extensive global field trials demonstrating consistent results across a diverse range of crops and environments, including yield increases and improved return on investment. This data-driven approach builds confidence and reduces perceived risk.
• Broadest biosolutions portfolio. At Rovensa Next, we bring one of the industry’s broadest and most integrated biosolutions portfolios, combining biostimulants, bionutrition, biocontrol and adjuvants, delivering holistic, science‑driven solutions for growers worldwide.

ABG: Where do you see the biggest untapped opportunities for improving NUE in the next five to 10 years?

Nolasco: The biggest untapped opportunities lie in unlocking the full biological potential of soils and crops, combined with greater precision in how inputs are applied. Key areas of future growth include:

1. Soil biology and regeneration. There is enormous potential in improving microbial activity and soil vitality matter to naturally enhance nutrient availability. Healthier soils can significantly reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizers while improving long-term productivity.
2. Precision and targeted nutrition. Advances in application timing, formulation, delivery, foliar feeding, and smart formulations will further increase the proportion of nutrients actually used by the plant.
3.  Integration of biostimulants and biofertilizers. These technologies can scale and offer clear potential to improve nutrient availability, uptake, and assimilation when integrated appropriately into crop nutrition programs.
4. Addressing “hidden hunger.” Correcting micronutrient deficiencies that are not visually apparent remains a significant opportunity to improve both yield and quality.
5. Whole-system agronomy. The greatest opportunity is moving beyond individual inputs toward fully integrated crop management systems, where nutrition, soil vitality, and plant physiology are managed together.

Over the next decade, NUE improvements will not come from any single breakthrough, but from integrating biological, chemical, plant physiology and agronomic innovations into coherent, integrated strategies that deliver more resilient, efficient, and sustainable farming systems.