Nitrate leaching is the main driving factor of soil calcium and magnesium leaching loss in intensive plastic-shed vegetable production systems

Weiwei Zhou, Qunyan Wang, Shuo Chen, Fei Chen, Haofeng Lv, Junliang Li, Qing Chen, Jianbin Zhou and Bin Liang

Agricultural Water Management, 2024, vol. 293, issue C

Abstract: Soil pH is important for influencing soil properties. High input of nitrogen (N) fertilizers and irrigation water has accelerated the soil acidification in plastic-shed greenhouses. However, little is known about the dynamics of soil pH buffering system, especially the base cations, and its response mechanisms under different N management practices. In this study, we investigated the responses of soil Ca2+ and Mg2+ leaching loss to nitrate leaching under different N application rate, N forms, or straw addition. Our long-term experiment in typical greenhouses showed that N application significantly decreased soil pH and increased Ca2+ and Mg2+ leaching loss by 43.1–73.6%, which correlated significantly and positively with nitrate leaching loss. However, optimizing N application and straw incorporation alleviated the leaching loss of Ca2+ and Mg2+ not only by alleviating the accompanying nitrate leaching caused by reduced N input, but also by reducing the conversion of exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ to water-soluble Ca2+ and Mg2+ caused by alleviating soil pH reduction. The laboratory microcosm experiment showed that nitrate application did not reduce soil pH, but significantly increased the leaching loss of Ca2+ and Mg2+. Ammonium sulfate application also significantly increased the leaching loss of Ca2+ and Mg2+, whereas the effects were significantly reversed by nitrification inhibitors. These results further supported the importance of nitrate leaching in promoting the Ca2+ and Mg2+ losses. Together, this study revealed new insights into the dynamics of cation losses mainly regulated by nitrate leaching loss, highlighting that optimizing N management is an effective strategy to alleviate base cation losses and subsequent soil acidification for sustainable agricultural management.

Keywords: Greenhouse; Nitrogen leaching; Soil acidification; Base cation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037837742400043X
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:293:y:2024:i:c:s037837742400043x

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2024.108708

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 ().