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

Imbalanced nutrient application and excessive use of N have presented a great challenge to North-central China in recent years. These practices have resulted in losses of yield and profits for farmers, and caused detrimental environmental effects. A fertilizer recommendation based on Nutrient Expert (NE) was developed based on crop responses to nutrient applied and the maintenance of soil nutrients to obtain both high yield and environmental protection. On-farm experiments with summer maize at 50 farmer fields in Yanjin, Henan, tested the hypothesis that maize yields, profit, nutrient uptake, and fertilizer efficiency can be improved through a NE-based fertilizer recommendation. In this study, we evaluated the performance of NE management using 145-51-61 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha compared to the prevailing, and imbalanced, farmer practice (FP) of applying 251-4-5 kg N-P₂O₅-K₂O/ha.

On average. NE plots obtained 8.3 t/ha grain yield and generated a net profit over fertilizer cost of USD 2,109/ha, which was not significantly different than the 8.2 t/ha and USD 2,090/ha achieved with FP. Despite this, NE management achieved significantly higher N use efficiency parameters such as N recovery efficiency (45%), partial productivity of N (57 kg/kg), and agronomic efficiency of N (21.3 kg/kg) than those with FP (i.e., 21%, 32.5 kg/kg, and 11.9 kg/kg). The NE recommendation also used 42% less N compared to FP.

The Nutrient Expert-based fertilizer recommendation not only maintained high grain yields, but also improved N use efficiency, which is especially beneficial to the environment. Henan-NMBF