Rational utilization of urease and nitrification inhibitors improve the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria community, nitrogen use efficiency and peanut growth

ABSTRACT

Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important oil and nitrogen (N) fixing crop. Urease inhibitors (UIs) and nitrification inhibitors (Nis) can mitigate the release of N and reduce the harmful effects of excessive N concentrations. However, the effect of these inhibitors on the soil nutrient-microbial activity-plant growth system is unknown in peanut. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects and mechanism of N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT), 3,4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) and sulfur-coated urea (SCU) on peanut. The results showed that comparing with urea alone, adding NBPT + DMPP inhibited the urea hydrolysis better and decreased the concentration of NH₄⁺-N + NO₃⁻-N by 20.8% in soil. Therefore, it increased the net photosynthetic rate, promoted the development of roots even the absorption of N by peanut, with N use efficiency (NUE) up to 20.8%. The effect of NBPT + DMPP on microorganism was better than that of NBPT alone, which considerably impacted the structure and abundances of aonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) but not ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA). Specifically, g_Nitrosospira and g_Nitrosomonas decreased by 46.9% and 2.2% respectively, and g(c) Betaproteobacteria increased. Furthermore, when combined with SCU on this basis, the overall effect was clearer.

KEYWORDS:

• Peanut
• urease
• NBPT
• DMPP
• slow release fertilizer

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the laboratory technician Jianhua Sun for the excellent crop cultivation in culture room, Qingdao, China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contribution

C.M., M.W., and P.S. conceived and designed the experiments. C.M., Q.W. and L.Y. performed the experiments; C.M. L.Y. and H.L. analyzed the data; C.M., M.W. and P.S. wrote the manuscript. All authors have contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [NCBI] at [URL].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2022MC074, ZR2021QC040, ZR2021QC096), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFD1000905), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41501330, 33201918).