Silicon Fertilizer Industry and Market
I. Industry Background
Silicon is an Essential Element for Plants
Silicon has been confirmed by the international soil community as the fourth plant nutrient element after nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Yuan Longping, the “Father of Hybrid Rice” and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, fully affirmed the role of silicon fertilizer in increasing the yield of hybrid rice. Experts from the Ministry of Science and Technology pointed out during an inspection in Xinyang area: “If the promotion of hybrid rice set off the first green revolution in our country, then the promotion of silicon fertilizer will surely set off the second green revolution for rice and even all crops in our country.” “High yield without high quality, high quality without high yield” has been a problem plaguing crop planting in our country. Experts pointed out that with the improvement of fertilization levels, the input of a large amount of chemical fertilizers must be accompanied by silicon fertilizer, and scientifically balanced fertilization of “nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium + silicon” can achieve the effect of high quality and high yield. The ability of silicon fertilizer to change crop quality characteristics is also attracting the attention of soil and fertilizer circles and plant nutrition circles worldwide.
In terms of fertilizer characteristics, silicon fertilizer belongs to a kind of quality fertilizer, health fertilizer, and plant growth regulating fertilizer, which has the advantages of both ordinary chemical fertilizers and trace element fertilizers. As a beneficial element required for plant growth, silicon can be used as a fertilizer to provide nutrients, especially for silicon-loving plants; it can also be used as a soil conditioner to improve soil properties. In addition, silicon also has the functions of disease prevention, insect prevention, and toxicity reduction. It has the advantages of being non-toxic, odorless, non-deteriorating, not easy to lose, and green and pollution-free. It is the first choice of green, high-efficiency, and high-quality fertilizer for modern agriculture. The main effects of silicon fertilizer on crops are as follows:
(1) Increase yield: Silicon helps to promote photosynthesis of crops, increase leaf chlorophyll content, make stems and leaves upright, and promote organic matter accumulation;
(2) Lodging resistance: Silicon fertilizer can increase the mechanical strength of crop stalks, making the stalks upright, which is conducive to dense planting;
(3) Improve resistance: After crops absorb silicon, they can form silicified cells on the surface and inside of the plant, thickening the cell walls of the stem and leaf surface layer, increasing the cuticle, and forming a solid protective layer, making it difficult for insects to bite and germs to invade;
(4) Silicon fertilizer can enhance the aeration within the crop body, prevent root rot and premature aging, and has a significant effect on the prevention and control of rice root rot disease;
(5) Silicon fertilizer can effectively regulate the opening and closing of leaf stomata, inhibit water transpiration, and enhance the crop’s stress resistance such as drought resistance, dry hot wind resistance, cold resistance, and low-temperature resistance;
(6) Silicon fertilizer can enhance the pollen vitality of crops. Applying silicon fertilizer during the flowering period can significantly improve the fruit setting rate;
(7) Silicon fertilizer can reduce the fixation of phosphate fertilizer in the soil, activate P in the soil and promote root absorption of P, and improve the utilization rate of phosphate fertilizer. At the same time, it strengthens the absorption and utilization of Ca and Mg, and can well regulate the balanced absorption of different nutrients such as N, P, and K by crops, and can be used as a plant growth regulating fertilizer;
(8) Silicon fertilizer is a health fertilizer, which can activate beneficial microorganisms, improve soil structure, reduce soil acidity, increase soil base, promote organic fertilizer decomposition, inhibit soil pathogens, resist continuous cropping, and reduce heavy metal pollution (e.g., continuous planting in plastic greenhouses for more than 3 years will encounter the accumulation of soil-borne pathogens such as mold, seriously affecting the yield and quality of fruits and vegetables. Applying silicon fertilizer will effectively prevent the survival and reproduction of mold);
(9) Silicon fertilizer is a quality fertilizer, which can significantly improve the quality of agricultural products, effectively prevent fruit cracking, fruit shrinking, and deformed fruit, increase fruit hardness, make the fruit shape correct, coloring good, taste good, commodity good, resistant to storage and transportation, and prolong the fresh-keeping period.
Development History of Silicon Fertilizer
As early as 1926, American agricultural researchers pointed out that silicon is an essential element for the good growth of rice. Afterwards, Germany and the United States successively used slag to develop silicon fertilizer for application. In 1930, Japanese experts began to conduct research on rice silicon nutrition, especially after World War II. In order to solve food difficulties, scientists adopted various technologies to increase rice yield per unit area, and discovered that silicon plays an important role in rice growth. In 1954, industrial waste residue was used to start the production and use of a new type of fertilizer - silicon fertilizer, and at the same time, the relationship between rice and silicon was studied. In 1955, the Japanese government officially approved silicon fertilizer as a new type of fertilizer in the form of “Fertilizer Law”, creating a precedent for the application of silicon fertilizer. The Japan Silicon Fertilizer Association was established in 1957. In 1960, Japan determined the critical index of soil available silicon. In 1965, Japan first used crushed and sieved slag to enter the market in the form of commercial silicon fertilizer. Since then, the application of slag silicon fertilizer has been popularized, and remarkable results have been achieved. In 1972, Japan Electric Power Company developed calcium-enhanced fly ash silicon fertilizer, opening up a new way for silicon fertilizer production. Japan’s silicon application amount is more than 1.35 million tons per year, and there are more than 30 silicon fertilizer factories, with a total annual output of more than 1 million tons. It mainly uses smelting slag (mainly ironmaking blast furnace slag to produce silicon fertilizer). Subsequently, South Korea, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand in Southeast Asia and Taiwan region of our country also successively introduced silicon fertilizer production technology from Japan and North Korea, and it was rapidly promoted. At the same time, the formula fertilization technology of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilizer and silicon fertilizer was also actively researched and promoted, and remarkable results were achieved.
The development of silicon fertilizer in our country was relatively slow. Research on silicon fertilizer only began in the mid-1970s, and it focused more on the form and availability of silicon in the soil and the effect of silicon fertilizer. By the early 1980s, there were only indoor and small-scale applications. Entering the 1990s, the production and application of silicon fertilizer in our country began to develop rapidly, and a batch of small and medium-sized silicon fertilizer enterprises emerged, such as Dalian Xilin Suoke Industry and Trade Co., Ltd., which can produce 200,000 tons of silicon fertilizer annually. Factories such as Guangxi Phosphate Chemical Plant, Guizhou Phosphate Plant, and Nanjing Chemical Industry Company mainly use yellow phosphorus slag as raw materials to produce silicon fertilizer. Jiangxi Gaoan Chemical Fertilizer Plant and Liaoning Xinjin County Chemical Plant use gas-making coal briquettes to produce silicon fertilizer. In the late 1980s, Xinyang Silicon Fertilizer Plant of Henan Academy of Sciences used ironmaking blast furnace slag as raw material to produce silicon fertilizer and achieved success. Subsequently, a number of small silicon fertilizer plants were built in Yuanyang, Nanyang, Pingdingshan, Sanmenxia and other places in the province. Yunnan Province began the development and research of silicon fertilizer in 1988, and it was listed as a “Spark Program” project of the Provincial Science and Technology Commission in the same year, and then listed as a “Spark Program” project of the National Science and Technology Commission in 1990. In 1989, a silicon fertilizer experimental production factory - Kunlin Multi-element Fertilizer Plant was built. In recent years, silicon fertilizer has received increasing attention across the country, and the annual output of silicon fertilizer in Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangsu has also exceeded 100,000 tons. A batch of silicon fertilizer plants have also been built in Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hainan and other places. But compared to our country’s annual demand of 30 to 50 million tons in the silicon fertilizer market, there is still a huge gap and development space in silicon fertilizer production.
In September 1999, the US Department of Agriculture held the first “Silicon and Agriculture” international academic symposium in Florida, marking that silicon fertilizer has received attention from the global agriculture and fertilizer industry. The cultivated land fertility survey and quality evaluation work carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2000 listed soil available silicon in the survey scope for the first time. In 2000, the Yellow River Publishing House published a collection of papers “Chinese Silicon Nutrition Research and Silicon Fertilizer Application” with 800,000 words and distributed it nationwide. In 2001, as a training material for the National Science and Technology Ministry’s Spark Program, “Silicon Fertilizer and Silicon Fertilizer Technology” was published. In the new batch of national key scientific and technological achievement promotion projects announced by the National Ministry of Science and Technology, silicon fertilizer topped the list. The national soil testing formula has made whether there is a lack of silicon dioxide a technical standard. On June 1, 2004, the Ministry of Agriculture promulgated the silicon fertilizer industry standard NY/T797-2004 completed by the Soil and Fertilizer Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other units, marking that after years of research, experiment and promotion, silicon fertilizer has become a new type of fertilizer in China in the 21st century.
II. Market Analysis
Market Demand
Our country is a country with severe silicon deficiency, and silicon-deficient soil in our country accounts for 50% to 80% of the total cultivated land area. Take Fujian Province as an example, it is located in subtropical bio-climatic conditions. The soil formed under the action of two processes of desilication and aluminum enrichment and biological enrichment, the silicic acid and its salt base produced by weathering will be leached in large quantities. Although the mass fraction of SiO2 in cultivated land soil is 30% to 70%, the available silicon content becomes very low; in addition, Fujian Province is a province that plants silicon-consuming crops (rice and other gramineous and root crops) for a long time, leading to a large annual demand for silicon. According to the analysis results of 179 soil samples by the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the average mass fraction of available silicon (SiO2) in Fujian soil is (8.05±1.72) mg/(100g). Available silicon mass fraction below 5mg/(100g) accounts for 41.9%, 5~10mg/(100g) accounts for 37.4%, while those greater than the critical value of 10mg/(100g) only account for 20.7%, that is, those below 10mg/(100g) (silicon deficiency) account for 79.3%.
The cultivated land area of Zhejiang Province is 171.5×10^4 hm2 (including paddy fields 142.6×10^4 hm2, dry land 28.9×10^4 hm2), and the silicon-deficient cultivated land area is as high as 73%. Data provided by the Jiangsu Soil and Fertilizer Station show that available silicon in Jiangsu soil is decreasing at a rate of 1.2 ~ 6.4 mg / kg year by year, and the silicon deficiency area is expanding year by year.
Soil silicon deficiency is almost an inevitable result, the main reasons are:
(1) Crops take away a large amount of available silicon from the soil year after year. Like other nutrient elements, silicon in the soil also undergoes a biological small cycle, but the silicon cycle is an unbalanced cycle. Plants can only absorb silicon in the form of metasilicic acid in the soil solution. After entering the plant body, it is dehydrated and deposited in plant tissues to form opal. After the plant dies, silicon returns to the soil in the form of opal. Opal is not organic matter, but water-insoluble amorphous silicon dioxide. Like the silicon dioxide existing in large quantities in the soil, it requires several years of soil weathering to release trace amounts of silicon for plant absorption. Even if all straw is returned to the field, it cannot enter a benign cycle.
(2) The parent material sources are different, and the soil available silicon content also varies greatly. Paddy soil developed from red sandstone, granite, gneiss and hilly loess parent material, the available silicon content is generally about 80mg / kg, and silicon deficiency is serious. Soil developed from river, lake and shallow sea alluvial parent material is mostly 100 ~ 150 mg / kg, which is a medium content.
(3) In the process of soil formation of acidic and slightly acidic soil, due to strong leaching - deposition, the soil available silicon content increases with the increase of soil depth. The illuvial horizon (generally appearing below 60cm) is more than double that of the plow layer. The freeness of iron in the surface soil is as high as 40% ~ 60%, and the phenomenon of desilication and iron enrichment in acidic soil is serious.
(4) Calcareous soil, with high calcium carbonate content, most available silicon exists in the form of inactive silicon-calcium compounds, which are difficult to hydrolyze and not easy to supply for crops to absorb and utilize.
(5) Silicon exists in a molecular state in the soil, neither charged nor dissociated, and is easy to leach with water washing. The water submergence time in old rice areas is long, and the soluble silicic acid in the soil is gradually leached and lost, especially in sloping land, where silicon loss is more serious.
Silicon Fertilizer Market Capacity
Our country’s perennial rice planting area is 450 million mu, and more than 50% of cultivated land is silicon-deficient (Zhejiang’s silicon deficiency degree reaches 70%). Calculated based on the need to supplement 55kg of silicon per mu per year (solid silicon fertilizer, the same below), the annual demand for silicon fertilizer is 25 million tons. The country perennially plants 20 million mu of crops such as cotton, peanuts, and corn. Calculated based on the use of 50 kg of silicon fertilizer, the annual demand is nearly 10 million tons. From this, it is estimated that the domestic annual demand for silicon fertilizer is 35 million tons or 1.5 million tons of water-soluble silicon fertilizer.
At present, China’s annual output of slag silicon fertilizer is about 1 million tons, which can only meet 3% of the market demand. However, the defects of slag-type silicon fertilizer itself have limited its industrial development, leaving huge market development space and a relatively loose market competition environment for water-soluble silicon fertilizer.
Market Competition
At present, silicon fertilizers used in agricultural production can be roughly divided into two categories: high-efficiency silicon fertilizers and slag silicon fertilizers according to their raw materials and available silicon content. High-efficiency silicon fertilizer: Generated from water glass or quartz sand and sodium carbonate. The main component is a mixture of sodium silicate and sodium metasilicate, water-soluble, and the available silicon mass fraction can reach 55%~60%. Slag silicon fertilizer: Mainly refers to silicon fertilizer produced from industrial waste residues such as steel slag and furnace fly ash, mostly citrate-soluble, and the available silicon mass fraction can reach about 10%. Water-soluble silicon fertilizer: Mainly sodium silicate and potassium silicate, with high available silicon content and quick effect, but easy to leach after being applied to the soil, and the fertilizer effect is short. Citrate-soluble silicon fertilizer: Mainly calcium silicate, with low available silicon content and delayed effect. Silicon is released slowly after being applied to the soil, and the fertilizer effect is long. For example, the application amount of calcium metasilicate is 1.5t/ha, and its residual effect can reach more than 4 years.
High-efficiency Silicon Fertilizer
As of August 20, there are 16 types of new silicon fertilizers that have obtained fertilizer registration certificates from the Ministry of Agriculture. Among them are 12 liquid silicon fertilizers and 4 solid ones. Among the 12 liquid silicon fertilizers, there are 2 labeled as nano silicon fertilizers. (1) “Zhongwangsuogui” brand 110g/L nano silicon fertilizer produced by Shanghai Lvyouyou Chemical Co., Ltd. The company was established in 2009 with a registered capital of 100,000, and the shareholders are Liang Longhua (13952150592) and Zhu Jingqi. (2) “Batian Zhongfen” water-soluble nano silicon fertilizer produced by Shenzhen Batian Ecological Engineering Co., Ltd. Batian Shares (Stock Code: 002170) was established in 1989, a Shenzhen listed company, with high visibility and strength in the fertilizer industry.
Changshu Lufu New Fertilizer R&D Co., Ltd. is a company specializing in the development of silicon fertilizer. The company was established in 2009, and the technical support is Professor Ma Tongsheng of Nanjing Agricultural University, a silicon fertilizer expert. Industrial and commercial registration information shows that it has introduced venture capital Changshu Guofa Venture Capital Co., Ltd.
US Yuma “Return” is agented by China Agricultural Materials Group as the national agent. China Agricultural Group has conducted long-term experiments, demonstrations and promotion on this product, and entered the Zhejiang market in 2012, but due to its high cost, low dealer profits, and the fact that farmers have not yet formed usage habits, it has not been widely sold in the market.
In addition, other well-known companies entering the industry include Anhui Liuguo Chemical (Stock Code 600470) (“Qinqin” brand solid instant silicon fertilizer), and Beijing Yanhua Yongle (40% compound silicon water-soluble granules).
There are two preparation processes for slag silicon fertilizer:
(1) Mixing Method Mix silicon fertilizer or silicon fertilizer raw materials with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers, crush, and granulate to make compound fertilizer, and trace elements, rare earth elements, etc. can also be added. The mixing method production process is simple and energy consumption is low, but there is a common problem that the increase in available silicon content is not obvious.
(2) Chemical Synthesis Method
Mix silicon fertilizer raw materials, fluxing agents, and additives in a certain proportion, and at high temperature
Published at: Nov 22, 2024 · Modified at: Dec 12, 2025
