Kinetics of Soil Urease in Four Agricultural Soils Affected by Urease Inhibitor PPD at Contrasting Moisture Regimes

Abstract

An incubation test was conducted on four agricultural soils to investigate effects of phenyl phosphorodiamidate (PPD) on soil urease kinetics at contrasting moisture regimes with contrasting fertility levels. The PPD made the Michaelis constant (Km) increase and the maximum enzyme reaction velocity (Vmax) decrease, behaving as a mixed inhibitor. With incubation time, Km first increased and then decreased under saturation condition, whereas it decreased under field-moist condition, the opposite of the changes of Vmax. Compared with black soil and albic soils, brown and cinnamon soils had larger Km and lower Vmax and Vmax/Km ratios, indicating that the effectiveness of PPD was greater in soils with low fertility. Compared with brown soil and cinnamon soil, black soil and albic soil showed more increases in Km and decreases in Vmax. To apply PPD under waterlogged, saturated, and low-fertility conditions could be a reasonable way to increase fertilizer nitrogen (N)–use efficiency.

• Kinetic parameters
• mixed inhibition
• moisture regime
• phenyl phosphorodiamidate

Acknowledgment

We thank the staff in the Department of Applied Soil Biochemistry and Department of Plant Nutrition and Fertilizer Research, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their academic and technical assistance.