Nutrient Management and Balanced Fertilization on Major Crops in Jilin Province

The project has been focusing on Nutrient Expert based fertilizer recommendation since 2011

IPNI-2006-CHN-JL7

19 Jan 2012

2011 Annual Interpretive Summary

Nutrient Expert-based Fertilizer Recommendation for Spring Maize in Jilin, 2011
This study was conducted to validate Nutrient Expert (NE)-based fertilizer recommendations for spring maize in farmer fields and compare them with farmer fertilizer practice (FFP). For this, thirty (30) on-farm experiments were conducted in five different villages in Gongzhuling city, Jilin province. NE-based fertilizer recommendation plots received on average 150-57-58-20-5 kg N-P2O5-K2O-S-Zn/ha, respectively, while farmer fertilizer practice (FFP) plots received an average of 202-107-91 kg N-P2O5-K2O/ha, respectively.

First year results of the study showed that grain yield (12.1 t/ha) and profit (USD 3,452/ha) obtained in NE-based treatments were higher than those in the FFP, where corresponding values were 11.9 t/ha and USD 3,294/ha although not statistically significant. However, significantly higher agronomic efficiency of N (18.8 kg/kg) was obtained using NE-based fertilizer recommendations than using FFP, where the corresponding value was 13.1. Also, 25.7% less fertilizer N was used in the NE-based treatment than that used in the FFP. Thus, the first year results of this study demonstrated the promise of NE tool as a viable alternative to soil testing. Jilin-NMBF