Plant Soil Environ., 2018, 64(4):164-172 | DOI: 10.17221/46/2018-PSE

Mitigation of ammonia volatilization with application of urease and nitrification inhibitors from summer maize at the Loess PlateauOriginal Paper

Muneer AHMED1,2, 3, Weijia YU1,2, Ming LEI1,2, Sajjad RAZA1,2, Jianbin ZHOU*,1,2
1 Collegeof Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, P.R. China
2 Key Laboratory of Plant Nutrition and Agri-Environment in Northwest China,

Field experiments were conducted at three sites: Yangling (YL); Zhouzhi-1 (ZH-1) and Zhouzhi-2 (ZH-2) of the Loess Plateau during summer maize crop, to investigate the effectiveness of N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT) and NBPT + dicyandiamide (DCD) with urea on reducing NH3 volatilization from different soils under different environmental conditions. Four treatments including control (no N), N-220 kg/ha, N-220 + NBPT and N-220 + NBPT + DCD were applied in two splits through the band placement method. Total NH3-N loss observed were 65.8, 40.5 and 20.1 NH3-N kg/ha (accounting for 29.9, 18.4 and 9.2% of N applied) from urea for YL, ZH-1 and ZH-2, respectively. The application of NBPT and NBPT + DCD significantly reduced NH3 volatilization by 80-93% and 75-90%, respectively. The meteorologic factors such as precipitation, air temperature and wind speed significantly affected NH3 volatilization. These results suggested that the amendment of urea with NBPT and NBPT + DCD have potential to mitigate NH3-N losses from alkaline soils in the Loess Plateau.

Keywords: urea hydrolysis; nitrogen stabilizers; vented chamber; mineral-N changes; Zea mays L.

Published: April 30, 2018  Show citation

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AHMED M, Weijia Y, LEI M, RAZA S, ZHOU J. Mitigation of ammonia volatilization with application of urease and nitrification inhibitors from summer maize at the Loess Plateau. Plant Soil Environ. 2018;64(4):164-172. doi: 10.17221/46/2018-PSE.
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