Nutrient Management and Optimized Fertilization on Wheat and Maize in Shanxi Province

The project has been focusing on Nutrient Expert based fertilizer recommendation since 2010

IPNI-2006-CHN-SX4

19 Jan 2012

2011 Annual Interpretive Summary

Nutrient Expert-based Fertilizer Recommendation for Winter Wheat and Spring Maize in Shanxi, 2011
This study was conducted to validate Nutrient Expert (NE)-based fertilizer recommendations for winter wheat and spring maize in farmer fields and compare them with farmer fertilizer practice (FFP). For this, 11 on-farm experiments were conducted in Linfen, Shanxi province. NE-based fertilizer recommendation plots received on average 137-67-78 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha for wheat and 172-46-58 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha for maize, respectively, while farmer fertilizer practice (FFP) plots received an average of 262-110-28 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha for wheat and 244-26-18 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha for maize, respectively.

First year results of the study showed that grain yields and profits in NE (8.3 t/ha and USD 2,773/ha for wheat and 9.7 t/ha and USD 3,284/ha for maize, respectively) and FFP (8.6 t/ha and USD 2,789/ha for wheat and 9.5 t/ha and USD 3,236/ha for maize, respectively) treatments were statistically similar. However, significantly higher agronomic efficiency of N (11.3 kg/kg for wheat and 7.2 kg/kg for maize), N recovery efficiency (37.3% for wheat and 25.7%% for maize), and partial factor productivity (63.9 kg/kg for wheat and 56.5 kg/kg for maize) were obtained using NE-based fertilizer recommendations than using FFP, where the corresponding values were 7.4 kg/kg and 5.4 kg/kg, 26.6% and 17.9%, and 36.6 kg/kg and 44.3 kg/kg for wheat and maize, respectively. With NE, 47.7% and 29.5% less fertilizer N was used than that used in FFP for wheat and maize, respectively. The study demonstrated that NE was an effective fertilizer recommendation method in Shanxi. Shanxi-NMBF