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

21 Mar 2014

2013 Annual Interpretive Summary


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 study, 18 on-farm experiments were conducted in Xinji and Zhending cities in Hebei Province. NE-based fertilizer recommendation plots received an average of 182 kg N, 104 kg P2O5 and 83 kg K2O/ha for winter wheat and 182 kg N, 73 kg P2O5 and 77 kg K2O/ha for summer maize, while FFP plots received an average of 342 kg N, 177 kg P2O5 and 40 kg K2O/ha for winter wheat and 295 kg N, 40 kg P2O5 and 50 kg K2O/ha for summer maize.

Results showed that the NE treatment led to significantly higher wheat grain yields (6.9 t/ha), profits (US$2,164/ha), agronomic efficiency of N (AEN, 5.8 kg/kg) and partial factor productivity of N (PFPN, 7.9 kg/kg) vis-a-vis the FFP treatment (6.3 t/ha, US$1,789/ha, 1.7 kg/kg and 18.4 kg/kg, respectively). For maize, the NE treatment had almost similar grain yields (8.7 t/ha) and profits (US$2,999/ha) as the FFP treatment (8.4 t/ha and US$2,886/ha, respectively), but had significantly higher AEN (6.6 kg/kg vs. 3.2 kg/kg) and PFPN (47.7 kg/kg vs. 28.3 kg/kg) compared to FFP. The study demonstrated that NE was an effective fertilizer recommendation method for wheat and maize crops in Hebei.