{"id":2660,"date":"2025-12-22T11:13:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/FREP\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2025-12-22T11:13:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:13:19","slug":"2025-frep-wph-nutrient-management-conference-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/FREP\/index.php\/2025-frep-wph-nutrient-management-conference-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 FREP\/WPH Nutrient Management Conference Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 33rd<\/sup>\u00a0Annual Fertilizer Research and Education Program (FREP) and Western Plant Health (WPH) Nutrient Management Conference was held in Fresno, CA, October 29-30, 2025. This year\u2019s conference brought together attendees from academia, crop consultants, growers, industry representatives, researchers, and government personnel.

This blog provides a quick recap of the event; for more detailed information, including summaries from presented FREP projects, check out the 2025 Conference Proceedings on the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) FREP webpage:\u00a0https:\/\/www.cdfa.ca.gov\/is\/ffldrs\/frep\/FREP_Conference_Proceedings.html<\/a>

Pre-Conference Tour (Oct. 28)<\/strong> The conference started off with a tour of Mid Valley Disposal, a state-of-the-art, in-vessel-covered composting facility, which receives local urban and agricultural green waste and creates a compost that is certified by CDFA as an Organic Input Material. The finished compost product is available in bulk for growers and sold in individual packages for home gardeners. The tour included a demonstration of THOR food waste de-packer; green waste sort line, grinding\/feedstock blending, Sustainable Generation composting bunker system, and compost screening operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Left) Tour attendees at the <\/em>Mid Valley Disposal facility. (Right<\/em>) Staff showing final compost products. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day One (Oct. 29)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDFA Secretary\u00a0Karen Ross<\/a>\u00a0and Western Plant Health President\/CEO Renee Pinel welcomed attendees to the conference, followed by a full day of presentations and discussions facilitated by Dr. Karl Wyant, Director of Agronomy, Nutrien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first half of the day included presentations on four FREP-funded research projects and one presentation that focused on soil nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in California:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n