China’s fertilizer consumption was approximately 52.39 million tons in 2008, accounting for 31.4% of the global total. Chemical fertilizer plays an important role in food security, non-point pollution and the quality of agro-products. The researchers from Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources Research, CAS, studied the temporal and spatial variations of China’s fertilizer consumption by crops at the provincial level and found that the major fertilizer ‘consumer’ in China is shifting from grain crops to horticultural crops.

The study found that the share of fertilizer consumption by grain crops dropped from 71.0 percent in 1998 to 57.8 percent in 2008, compared with the horticultural crops increasing from 19.3 to 30.8 percent during the same period of time.

China’s agricultural fertilizer consumption rose by 31.9 percent from 1998 to 2008. The western and northeastern regions of the country were close to the national average, while the central region was higher (50.8 percent) and the east region was lower (13.0 percent). Thus, it can be concluded that, spatially, China’s fertilizer consumption is shifting toward the central and western regions.

From 1998 to 2008, fertilizer use by grain crops decreased mainly due to the reduction of sown area; vegetable fertilizer use increased due mainly to the rising area. The increase for tea and fruit crops resulted from both the rising application rate and sown area.

This research was co-funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 40971062) and National Basic Research Program of China(No. 2010CB950902) and the main findings has been published on Journal of Geographical Sciences（XIN Liangjie, *LI Xiubin, TAN Minghong. Temporal and regional variations of China’s fertilizer consumption by crops during 1998–2008. Journal of Geographical Sciences Volume 22, Number 4 (2012), 643-652, DOI: 10.1007/s11442-012-0953-y）.