Long-term use of balanced fertilization decreases nitrogen losses in a maize-wheat system on Inceptisol of north India

ABSTRACT

Soil nitrogen (N) distribution and crop utilization are closely related to fertilizer management and crop productivity. The present study, based on 47-year fertilizer focused on a cropping system (maize-wheat) based budgeting of N which is necessary to identify its sources and losses to improve fertilizer use efficiency, crop productivity, and environmental sustainability. Long-term application of fertilizer has a positive effect on soil TN (total nitrogen) and TOC (total organic carbon), which increased by 36–107% and 24–103%, respectively compared to control. Integrated application of fertilizer and farmyard manure registered 266% higher grain yield of maize-wheat over the control but the addition of 50% higher NPK than recommended NPK showed no yield advantage and reduced recovery of fertilizer N by 23% (maize) and 22% (wheat) relative to NPK. Accounting all the N inputs and outputs, NPK application (least N loss) has 49–85 kg ha⁻¹ lower N loss compared to NP and N application, respectively. It has concluded that the long-term use of recommended and balanced fertilizer alone or in combination with FYM has the potential to improve N and C status of soil and its recovery by decreasing its loss, which increases the productivity of the maize-wheat system.

KEYWORDS:

• Nitrogen
• N budget
• maize-wheat
• long-term
• efficiency

Acknowledgments

The present work was part of All India Coordinated Research Project on long-term fertilizer experiment and funding was provided by Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.