Nitrogen fertilizer management effects on soil nitrate leaching, grain yield and economic benefit of summer maize in Northwest China

Junsheng Lu, Tiantian Hu, Baocheng Zhang, Li Wang, Shuohuan Yang, Junliang Fan, Shicheng Yan and Fucang Zhang

Agricultural Water Management, 2021, vol. 247, issue C

Abstract: Reducing soil nitrate leaching losses from agricultural ecosystem and improving crop yield and nitrogen use efficiency with effective nitrogen management strategies are extremely important for sustainable agricultural development. A-two-year field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of five nitrogen management strategies (CK: no nitrogen application; FP: applying 210 kg N ha−1 at sowing; MFP: applying 105 kg N ha−1 at sowing and top-dressing 105 kg N ha−1 at V12 stage; Drip210 and Drip150: multi-split-N fertigation (MSF, sowing: 20%, V6: 30%, V14: 30% and R1: 20%) with 210 and 150 kg N ha−1) on soil nitrate-N (NO3−-N) distribution and residual, nitrate leaching losses, nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), grain yield and economic benefit of summer maize in Northwest China. The results showed that MSF produced more consistent soil NO3−-N content over the entire maize growing season. The two-year average leachate NO3−-N concentration of Drip210 and Drip150 was 24.1 and 19.2 mg L−1, significantly lower than FP and MFP. The total nitrate leaching losses (TNLL) of Drip210 and Drip150 were significantly lower than that of FP and MFP (P < 0.05). The two-year average TNLL of Drip210 and Drip150 was 19.0 and 14.4 kg ha−1, decreased by 32.4% and 48.7% compared with FP (28.1 kg ha−1), respectively. The above-ground biomass, grain yield and NUE of Drip210 and Drip150 were higher than that of FP and MFP (P < 0.05). Both Drip210 and Drip150 achieved comparable grain yield, but Drip150 used 28.6% less nitrogen than Drip210, resulted in 24.0% lower TNLL and higher NUE than Drip210. In addition, the average economic benefit under Drip150 was the highest and increased by 397 and 1675 CNY ha−1, respectively, compared with Drip210 and MFP. Therefore, Drip150 was recommended as a promising fertilization strategy to reduce nitrate leaching losses and improve nitrogen use efficiency, while maintain high crop yield and economic benefit in Northwest China.

Keywords: Drip fertigation; Soil leachate; Nitrogen use efficiency; Sustainable agricultural (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377421000044
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:247:y:2021:i:c:s0378377421000044

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2021.106739

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().