Coffee Yield Response To Split Fertilization Producción de café en respuesta al fraccionamiento de la fertilización

Fertilization is a key practice in coffee production, its effectivity depends on relevance and timing. Consideringthe diversity of soils used to grow coffee in Colombia, the cost of fertilizers and the variations in climaticfactors that affect cultivation, split fertilization is a strategy aimed at increasing productivity. The mainobjective of our study was to evaluate the effect of split fertilization on annual coffee production as theaccumulated of the productive cycle in six localities of the coffee zone (El Agrado-Quindío, El RosarioAntioquia, Naranjal-Caldas, Paraguaicito-Quindío, El Porvenir-Caldas and San Antonio-Santander) that have different climatic and soil characteristics. Fertilizers doses were established according to the recommendations of the soil analysis for each locality and applied split into two, three, four, and six times per year. There was no split effect in five localities, despite the fact that the rainfall exceeded the historical levels of more than 30 years in at least two years of evaluation. At Paraguaicito, whose soil has high hydraulic conductivity, the split fertilization at four and six times per year increased around 12% in production only in one of the four years evaluated. The results show that the supply of the required fertilizer, according to the soil analysis, can be done in two splits per year.