DENITRIFICATION LOSSES OF NITROGEN-FERTILIZER APPLIED TO WINTER-WHEATFOLLOWING LEY AND ARABLE ROTATIONS AS ESTIMATED BY ACETYLENE INHIBITION AND N-15 BALANCE
Kwt. Goulding et al., DENITRIFICATION LOSSES OF NITROGEN-FERTILIZER APPLIED TO WINTER-WHEATFOLLOWING LEY AND ARABLE ROTATIONS AS ESTIMATED BY ACETYLENE INHIBITION AND N-15 BALANCE, Journal of soil science, 44(1), 1993, pp. 63-72
We studied the fate of 222 kg N ha-1 applied in spring as (KNO3)-N-15
to winter wheat test crops which followed either continuous arable cro
pping (Arable) or a rotation in which a 3-year grass/clover ley preced
ed the wheat (Ley). Denitrification losses (measured by an acetylene-i
nhibition method) of over 1 kg N ha-1 d-1 were measured for short peri
ods following heavy rain in mid-May. However the generally dry and coo
l weather resulted in accumulated losses by denitrification between fe
rtilizer application and anthesis equivalent to only 5.3% and 3.6% (+/
-2%) of the applied N for the arable and ley treatments respectively.
The smaller loss from the lev was despite this treatment containing mo
re inorganic N and available carbon. N-15 balance indicated that, at a
nthesis, 1.5% and 11.5% (+/-7%) of the labelled N was lost from the ar
able and ley treatments respectively. Given the precision of the N-15
and the acetylene-inhibition methods, the results are not significantl
y different. However, the larger difference between methods for losses
from the ley treatment may be an underestimate because N-15 balance d
oes not measure losses of unlabelled N. These were probably very small
on the arable treatment but could have increased total N loss by 25%
to c. 32 kg ha-1 on the ley treatment compared with the 8 kg ha-1 meas
ured as denitrificd. Such a large difference is unlikely to be an erro
r but was probably due to ammonia volatilization from this crop which
was severely infected by mildew. The results were thus a poor test of
the acetylene-inhibition method, but revealed another loss process whi
ch could be significant in some situations.