Reverse Blending as a Strategy for Purely Customizing Fertilizers While Considerably Reducing the Diversity to Be Produced: A Case Study

Abstract

Reasoned fertilization is a major concern for sustainable agriculture and requires a major increase in the number of fertilizer formulas that cannot be achieved cost-effectively with current production models. We propose therefore a new approach, called reverse blending, based on a delayed differentiation performed nearby end-users, consisting in defining the composition of inputs that do not pre-exist, whose number must be as small as possible and whose blends will meet the exact requirements of a very wide variety of customized fertilizers. This approach is demonstrated through a case study that has identified the optimal composition of 8 inputs, whose blends enable the production of 700 fertilizers that are customized for some Moroccan provinces.

Keywords: Reasoned fertilization; mass customization; blending; inputs conception; fertilizers