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

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

IPNI-2009-CHN-HE26

25 Jan 2013

2012 Annual Interpretive Summary

Nutrient Expert®-based Fertilizer Recommendations for Winter Wheat and Summer Maize in Hebei, 2012

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, 18 on-farm experiments were conducted in Xinji and Zhengding cities in Hebei province. NE-based fertilizer recommendation plots received on average 182 kg N, 98 kg P2O5 and 78 kg K2O/ha for wheat and 182 kg N, 74 kg P2O5 and 82 kg K2O/ha for maize, while farmer fertilizer practice (FFP) plots received an average of 371 kg N, 180 kg P2O5 and 30 kg K2O/ha for wheat; and 305 kg N, 39 kg P2O5 and 49 kg K2O/ha for maize.

Results showed that the NE treatment had significantly higher wheat grain yields (7 t/ha), profits (US$2,181/ha), agronomic efficiency of N (5.3 kg/kg), and partial factor productivity of N (39 kg/kg) than FFP (6.7 t/ha, $1,901/ha, 2 kg/kg, 18.2 kg/kg, respectively). For maize, however, the NE treatment had almost similar grain yields (8 t/ha) and profits ($1,994/ha) as the FFP (7.9 t/ha and $1,921/ha, respectively), but had significantly higher agronomic efficiency of N (4.9 kg/kg vs. 2.6 kg/kg), and partial factor productivity of N (44 vs. 27.6 kg/kg) than FFP. The study demonstrated that NE was an effective fertilizer recommendation method for wheat and maize crops in Hebei. Hebei-NMBF