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

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

IPNI-2006-CHN-HA16

24 Mar 2015

2014 Annual Interpretive Summary


This study was conducted to validate Nutrient Expert(R) (NE)-based fertilizer recommendations for summer maize and winter wheat and compare them with farmer fertilizer practice (FP). Two NE field validation experiments were conducted in Hebi town of Henan Province. The winter wheat and summer maize was the fourth and fifth successive crop, initiated with maize in the summer of 2012. The NE treatment was implemented with application of 182 kg N, 86 kg P2O5 and 83 kg K2O/ha in winter wheat; and 182 kg N, 79 kg P2O5 and 90 kg K2O/ha in summer maize. The FP treatment supplied 177 kg N, 94 kg P2O5 and 80 kg K2O/ha in winter wheat; and 252 kg N, 45 kg P2O5 and 72 kg K2O/ha in summer maize.

The NE treatment produced nearly the same average grain yield (10 t/ha) as the FP treatment (9.8 t/ha) in winter wheat. In summer maize, 9.9 t/ha of grain yield was observed in both the NE and FP treatments, but the NE treatment provided less N and higher P and K input than FP. The corresponding agronomic efficiency (AE) and partial factor productivity (PFP) values for N under the NE treatment were 6.6 kg/kg and 43.3 kg/kg in winter wheat, and 6.0 kg/kg and 43.1 kg/kg in summer maize.

The results demonstrated that NE can improve N use efficiency without sacrificing grain yields within this winter wheat and summer maize system.