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Use of controlled-release urea to improve yield, nitrogen utilization, and economic return and reduce nitrogen loss in wheat-maize crop rotations

Agronomy, ISSN: 2073-4395, Vol: 11, Issue: 4
2021
  • 25
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 25
    Captures
  • 1
    Mentions
  • 0
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    25
    • Citation Indexes
      25
  • Captures
    25
  • Mentions
    1
    • Blog Mentions
      1
      • Blog
        1

Article Description

Excessive nitrogen (N) fertilizer input has become a common phenomenon among most farmers in the winter wheat–summer maize rotation system of north-central China, and has resulted in low nutrient use efficiency and environmental pollution. Controlled-release urea (CRU) is proposed as a solution to excessive fertilization because CRU achieves high yields and reduces N losses. Therefore, CRU mixed with normal urea at rates based on the Nutrient Expert (NE) system was used as fertilizer in a 4-year field experiment to test the preference in crop yields, economic benefits, nitrogen use efficiencies, and N losses. The following fertilizer treatments were established: local farmers’ practices (FP); normal urea fertilizer at the rate recommended by the NE system (NE); mixed CRU and normal urea at ratios of 60:40 (CRU1) and 75:25 (CRU2) based on the NE system; and 80% of the recommended N rate of the NE, CRU1 and CRU2 treatments (80% NE, 80% CRU1 and 80% CRU2). The results showed that, compared with the NE treatment at the same application rate of N, mixed CRU and urea increased yields and net benefits while reducing N loss. The application of CRU at 60% for maize and 75% for wheat had the best overall effects. Compared with FP, the average grain yield, recovery efficiency of N fertilizer and net benefits increased by 8.5%, 10.9% and 11.3%, respectively, for maize with CRU1, and increased by 4.5%, 15.1% and 10.3%, respectively, for wheat with CRU2. Furthermore, mixed CRU and urea at the recommended N rate significantly reduced N loss from 38.5% to 40.3% but increased soil NO-N and NH-N contents at 0–30 cm, although opposite results (NO-N) were observed deeper in the soil (30–90 cm). In the treatments 80% CRU1 and 80% CRU2, the maize yield and overall economic benefits were equivalent to those in the FP treatment, but apparent N loss was significantly reduced. Thus, these results confirmed that the combination of the CRU and the NE system for winter wheat–summer maize in north-central China is efficient and valuable, and has the potential to improve yield, nitrogen use efficiency and net benefit with low N losses.

Bibliographic Details

Xinpeng Xu; Ping He; Shaojun Qiu; Shicheng Zhao; Wei Zhou; Jianlin Wei; Rongzong Cui; Jingxia Sun

MDPI AG

Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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