Mitigating nitrous oxide emission using nanoclay-polymer composites in rice-wheat cropping system

ABSTRACT

A study was conducted in lab for synthesizing and characterizing the behavior of the nanoclay-polymer composites (NCPCs). Furthermore, greenhouse experiments carried out to investigate the effects of NCPCs application on crop yield, nutrient uptake, soil nitrogen availability and N₂O emission. Wheat flour (WF), sodium alginate (Na-Alg) and acrylic acid (AA)+ acrylamide (Am) (AA+Am) NCPCs were synthesized via free radical polymerization and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), SEM-energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). At lower dose NCPCs, resulted in significantly equal grain yield in rice and wheat with 100% urea treatment with reduced amount of N₂O emissions. Yield-scaled N₂O emissions of rice and wheat under T₉ [NCPC (AA+AM+Clay) (75% N of RDF) + PK (full dose)] treatment was respectively 19.8 and 25.5% lower than urea treatment. These findings demonstrate that there is a great potential to increase crop yields with lower N₂O emissions through use of innovative fertilizer technique in India.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Nanoclay polymer composites
• nitrous oxide gas
• acrylic acid + acrylamide NCPC
• wheat flour NCPC
• sodium alginate NCPC

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Head, Division of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India for providing all the required facilities to carry out the present investigation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.