Save money and increase profits with N-Check today
Nitrogen fertiliser (34.5N%) currently costs approximately £406/t (December 2025), which is £62 more than in November 2024. One of the most straightforward ways to ensure you are not spending unnecessary money on unneeded fertiliser is to analyse your soil withNRM‘s N-Check now.
Not only can understanding the nitrogen content of your soil save you spending money on expensive fertiliser where it is not needed, but it is designed to support you in optimising crop production and therefore increase profit margins.
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Why should I test my soil for nitrogen?
Nitrogen is responsible for the rapid growth of foliage and crops need large amounts to achieve top yields. As nitrogen fertiliser (34.5N%) currently costs approximately £406/t (December 2025), which is £62 more than in November 2024, It’s definitely worth checking how much nitrogen is already available to the crop from your soil to help save you money. Get a quote for our N-Check or N-Check Plus analysis service today to see how much fertiliser you need to apply in the Spring.
How does N-Check benefit me?
N-Check analyses soil for Nitrate-Nitrogen, Ammonium-Nitrogen, soil mineral nitrogen, and gives a total value for the combined soil depth. This helps you determine how much nitrogen is left in the soil after harvest and therefore much fertiliser you need to use, saving unnecessary costs.
How does N-Check Plus benefit me?
N-Check Plus adds soil organic matter (SOM) analysis to estimate mineralisable nitrogen, Spring crop N to determine the soil nitrogen supply (SNS), and the SNS index based on RB209 guidelines. SOM helps determine overall soil health and enables you to make informed decisions about land management.
How can N-Check save me money?
By avoiding applying fertiliser where it is not required and ensuring that crops receive an optimum level of nutrition, you can both avoid spending unnecessary money and increase profit margins - all by understanding your soil nutrient levels.
Frequently asked questions
What is the current price of fertiliser?
Nitrogen fertiliser (34.5N%) currently costs around 98p/kg (£341/t). It’s incredibly important to make decisions based on accurate analysis to avoid applying more nitrogen than the crop requires.
Why should I do my N-Check analysis now?
NRM’s N-Check package helps you calculate how much nitrogen is in the soil after winter to help you manage fertiliser costs in the Spring.
What has N-Check analysis told us so far?
In samples taken in 2022, the average SMN value was 34kg N/ha across the three sample depths, this increased as the sampling depth increased. 17% of the samples with greater than 60kg N/ha were at the deepest depth of 60-90cm. This was twice as many samples as at the shallower depths. This could suggest that nitrogen has leached further down the soil profile and may contribute to decision making around how much and how early nitrogen fertiliser should be applied this spring.
The largest SMN values could be a result of either:
- Genuinely high SMN reserves
- Inadvertent contamination when taking and preparing the sample for despatch to the lab
- Delay in getting samples to the lab and not keeping the samples fridge cold at all times. The warmer temperature causes an increase in SMN levels, inflating the results.
It is important to test your soils for SMN annually and benchmark levels across soil types and the cropping rotation. This will help inform your spring nutrient management plan and enable improvements in nitrogen use efficiency. Read more here.
How does nitrogen fertiliser impact the environment?
The impact of losing nitrogen to watercourses can be very damaging. The drinking water regulations set a maximum permissible level of 50 mg/l.
The main concerns with high concentrations of nitrate in water are:
- The risks to human health from drinking water after abstraction from ground or surface waters;
- Eutrophication (the nutrient enrichment of water) of lowland surface waters;
- Acidification and eutrophication of upland waters;
- Nutrient enrichment in other sensitive habitats like Groundwater Dependent Terrestrial Ecosystems.
Agriculture is the dominant source of nitrate in England, coming to about 70% of total inputs, while sewage effluent comes in second place at 25-30%. In general, nitrate concentrations are greatest in the drier, arable-dominated southern and eastern areas of England. This is also where we are most dependent on groundwater for public water supply and base flow to rivers.
When rivers and streams have high levels of nitrate and/or phosphate, this causes eutrophication, leading to the development of algal blooms. These are especially prevalent in warm weather and can destroy the biodiversity living in the water environment.
Agriculture has room to become more efficient and use nitrogen much more effectively, for both environmental and economic reasons. Better planning ahead of the cropping season, including measuring soil mineral nitrogen for fields within the rotation, will provide a good benchmark of the soil nitrogen levels across the farm. This is a highly cost-effective way to begin to improve nitrogen use efficiency.