Nutrient Management and Optimized Fertilization on Maize in Heilongjiang Province

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

IPNI-2006-CHN-HL18

21 Mar 2014

2013 Annual Interpretive Summary


Nutrient Expert® (NE) is a computer-based decision support tool developed to assist local experts to formulate fertilizer guidelines for maize. It is based on the principles of site-specific nutrient management (SSNM). The tool is especially useful when soil testing facilities are not easily accessible, which makes timely fertilizer recommendation difficult. This study was continued in 2013 to validate NE-based fertilizer recommendations for spring maize in farmer fields and compare them with farmer fertilizer practice (FFP). For this project, 12 on-farm experiments were conducted in five different counties in Heilongjiang Province. Each individual site had a site-specific rate applied; the NE-based plots received 178 kg N, 82 kg P2O5 and 80 kg K2O/ha on average, while the FFP plots received an average of 172 kg N, 65 kg P2O5 and 53 K2O/ha.

Grain yield (11.5 t/ha) and profit (US$3,424/ha) were higher in NE-based treatment plots than in the FFP plots, where corresponding values were 10.6 t/ha and US$3,185/ha. Also, higher agronomic (20.3 kg/kg) and recovery efficiencies (34%) of N were obtained using NE-based fertilizer recommendations versus FFP, where corresponding values were 15.5 kg/kg and 25%. This was likely due to the fact that there was more balanced application of N, P and K fertilizers in the NE-based treatment vis-a-vis in the FFP treatment.