High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, worlds longest study finds

Using high levels of common fertilisers on grassland halves pollinator numbers and drastically reduces the number of flowers, research from the world’s longest-running ecological experiment has found. Increasing the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus doused on agricultural grassland reduced flower numbers fivefold and halved the number of pollinating insects, according to the paper by the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research. Bees were most affected – there were over nine times more of them in chemical-free plots compared with those with the highest levels of fertiliser, according to the paper, published in the journal npj Biodiversity. The lead researcher

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