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

This study was conducted to validate Nutrient Expert® (NE)-based fertilizer recommendations for winter wheat and summer maize in farmer fields and compare them with farmer fertilizer practice (FFP). For this, 13 on-farm experiments for winter wheat and 16 on-farm experiments for summer maize were conducted in Linfen, Shanxi province. NE-based fertilizer recommendation plots received, on average, 176-90-69 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha for wheat and 150-61-61 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha for maize, while FFP plots received an average of 273-106-29 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha for wheat and 264-42-20 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha for maize.

Results of the study showed that grain yields and profits in NE (9.7 t/ha and US$2,835/ha for wheat and 9.5 t/ha and $3,499/ha for maize) and FFP (10 t/ha and $2,907/ha for wheat and 9.1 t/ha and $3,490/ha for maize) treatments were statistically similar. However, significantly higher agronomic efficiency of N (7.2 kg/kg for wheat and 8.9 kg/kg for maize), N recovery efficiency (18% for wheat and 31% for maize), and partial factor productivity of N (55 kg/kg for wheat and 75 kg/kg for maize) were obtained using NE-based fertilizer recommendations than using FFP, where the corresponding values were 5.5 and 5.3 kg/kg, 16 and 15%, and 37 and 43 kg/kg for wheat and maize, respectively. With NE, 36% and 43% less fertilizer N were 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