Urease Inhibitors Effects on the Nitrogen Use Efficiency in a Maize–Wheat Rotation with or without Water Deficit

Raúl Allende-Montalbán, Diana Martín-Lammerding, María del Mar Delgado, Miguel A. Porcel and José L. Gabriel
Additional contact information
Raúl Allende-Montalbán: Environment and Agronomy Department, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, CSIC), Ctra. de la Coruña km. 7,5, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Diana Martín-Lammerding: Environment and Agronomy Department, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, CSIC), Ctra. de la Coruña km. 7,5, 28040 Madrid, Spain
María del Mar Delgado: Environment and Agronomy Department, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, CSIC), Ctra. de la Coruña km. 7,5, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Miguel A. Porcel: Environment and Agronomy Department, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, CSIC), Ctra. de la Coruña km. 7,5, 28040 Madrid, Spain
José L. Gabriel: Environment and Agronomy Department, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, CSIC), Ctra. de la Coruña km. 7,5, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: The use of urease inhibitors in irrigated systems decreases both soil ammonium (NH 4 + ) and nitrate (NO 3 − ) availability, and, thus, could be an easy tool to reduce N loss due to ammonia volatilization and NO 3 − leaching. The main goal of this experiment was to assess the effect of urease inhibitors on N use efficiency, N losses, and their economic impact in a maize-wheat field experiment. In this study, 10 treatments were compared, combining the urea fertilizer with or without urease inhibitor, applied in one or two dressings, and under optimal or sub-optimal irrigation. A single application of urease inhibitor (IN 1d ), coupled with the conventional urea, helped to reduce the nitrate leaching risk both during the maize period (even when compared to the two dressing treatment) and after harvest. In addition, this improvement was achieved together with an increase in economic benefit, even when compared with the application of the same amount of regular urea split into two dressings. Under low water availability systems, the benefits of applying urease inhibitors increased with respect to the application of regular urea, making this technique a very promising strategy for adaptation to climate change in arid and semiarid regions.

Keywords: sustainable cropping systems; nitrate leaching; ammonia volatilization; fertilizer management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/7/684/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/7/684/ (text/html)

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:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:7:p:684-:d:597482

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().