Fertilizer Australia Workshop

Fertilizer Australia ran their national conference in Melbourne 9-11th September 2025. The ARC Research Hub for Smart Fertilisers was invited to host the 3rd day of the conference, and it was an honour to be able to welcome the ninety delegates to the University of Melbourne.  

We relished the opportunity and could see there was a strong interest in the crowd to hear about what we do and how we use rigorous scientific experimentation and testing to create the next generation of smart fertilisers, along with the knowledge to be able to inform policy and emission testing methodology. 

Professor Helen Suter was introduced by Fertilizer Australia’s Program Manager, Jeff Kraak to open the morning talks and give an overview of the Smart Fertiliser Hub. In the crowd were a myriad of fertiliser industry people, farmers and scientific researchers. Helen’s talk was a great taster of our Hub before we set out for a tour of the multidisciplinary facilities that enable the Hub to create groundbreaking research. 

Groups of 30 cycled around some of the world class facilities:  

• The Chemical Engineering Greenhouse Gases lab, where we look at controlled release fertilisers;  

• The Soil and Microbiology labs where we test our control release fertilisers, nitrogen inhibitors, urease inhibitors and bio-fertilisers, in assays and soils;  

• The Glasshouse where we test our fertilisers in real plants and test toxicity and viability.  

It would have been a bit of a struggle to take 90 people to the field in such a tight timeframe, so we saved that for next time. 

There were plenty of insightful talks over morning tea, from Active Agri Science, our own chemist Dr. Joses Nathanael who spoke on Nitrogen Inhibitors, followed by Phil Nixon – with 45 years of experience in agribusiness – who covered the Inhibitor Coverage of Solid Fertilisers. Lastly, we finished the session with a talk on Maximum Residue Limits in Agricultural Produce for N Inhibitors by Jeff Kraak. 

Not only was the event brilliant for networking and catching up with industry people across Australia but was also an excellent opportunity to find out what research is being done across the fertiliser space. It was an effective and insightful event that showcased our Hub and capped off another excellent Fertilizer Australia conference.  

Thank you to all who helped make this event happen!