Effects of a nitrification inhibitor on nitrogen species in the soil and the yield and phosphorus uptake of maize
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Because phosphate rock and phosphorus (P) have become a scarce resource in the European Union (EU, 2017), recovering P from wastewater or sewage sludge has become extremely important (Schaum, 2018). However, the plant availability of these novel P fertilizers from recycled materials is often lower than that of commercial P fertilizers (Kratz et al., 2019). One promising way to increase the plant availability of P fertilizer is co-fertilization with nitrogen (N) in the form of ammonium, which can enhance the yield and P uptake of plants and make P fertilizers from recycled material more competitive with commercial phosphate rock-based P fertilizers (Rahmatullah et al., 2006; Vogel et al., 2018; Robles-Aguilar et al., 2019).
Previously it was shown that ammonium fertilizer instead of nitrates could increase the P uptake of plants (Rahmatullah et al., 2006; George et al., 2016; Pedersen et al., 2019). The increased mobilization of the P fertilizer in the soil occurs because ammonium decreases the rhizospheric pH due to release of H+ by plants during ammonium uptake (Thomson et al., 1993; Pedersen et al., 2019). The additional use of a nitrification inhibitor (NI) can delay the nitrification, making the ammonium available for a longer period in the soil solution after its application (Barth et al., 2019), which could further enhance crop yield (Rahmatullah et al., 2006; Pedersen et al., 2019).
Thus, the goal of this study was to investigate the effects of ammonium and an NI on the dry matter yield and P uptake of maize with different types of P fertilizers. In this study, we performed a pot experiment with maize in soils amended with one water-soluble and two water-insoluble P fertilizers and ammonium sulfate nitrate (ASN), with or without an NI. Afterwards, the plant availability of phosphorus, ammonium, and nitrate in the amended soils was analyzed by various chemical extraction tests and the Diffusive Gradient in Thin-films (DGT) method (Huang et al., 2016a, Huang et al., 2016b; Vogel et al., 2017). To examine possible soil reactions to P and N compounds, soil samples were collected from pots after a pre-incubation period of 7 days with the fertilizer but before sowing, and after growth and harvest of maize plants, for the investigation of the amount of P and N by K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. This technique was previously successfully used to identify P (Kizewski et al., 2011; Kruse et al., 2015; Vogel et al., 2018) and N (Jokic et al., 2004; Leinweber et al., 2007; Adams et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2019) compounds in soils. We extended this study to examine the soil microscale using N K-edge micro-X-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) and micro-XANES methods.
Section snippets
Pot experiment
The pot experiment consisted of three different P treatments: a sewage sludge-based recycled P fertilizer SS-Mg (water-insoluble; Steckenmesser et al., 2017), a phosphate rock called hyperphosphate (Hyp, 32% P2O5, water-insoluble), and a triple superphosphate (TSP, 46% P2O5, water-soluble). A control with no added P (P0) was also included. Nitrogen was added in form of ASN (EuroChem Agro, Mannheim, Germany) and ASN with the NI DMPP (3,4-dimethylpyrazolphosphate (Zerulla et al., 2001); ASN + NI;
Dry matter and P uptake of maize
Table 1 shows the dry matter yield and P uptake of maize for the different treatments in the pot experiment. All three P fertilizers used showed a higher dry matter yield and P uptake of maize than the treatment without P fertilizer (P0), with the highest values observed for the TSP treatments. Furthermore, the fertilized treatments with the NI (ASN + NI) exhibited higher dry matter yield of maize than treatments without the NI. These differences in dry matter yield were significant for Hyp and
Conclusions
In this study, we investigated the effects of an NI on the behavior of ammonium in soil and its influence on P uptake by maize. By applying the novel N K-edge micro-XRF and micro-XANES methods and the Mogilevkina method, we verified that an NI promotes ammonium fixation in fertilized soils. A high amount of plant available ammonium in the soil solution, which was not nitrified by using the NI and the possible re-release of temporarily fixed ammonium, most likely decrease the rhizosphere pH due
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
CV thanks the German Research Foundation (VO 1794/4-1) for financial support. CV and DS thank the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture for financial support (2811NA022/2811NA023). AP thanks the Atración de Talento program from the Comunidad de Madrid. Collaboration between BAM (CV, CA) and the University of South Australia (LH) was supported by the Universities Australia – DAAD Researcher Exchange Scheme (2018–2019). Phosphorus K-edge XANES analyses were conducted on the ID21
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Tine tip width and placement depth by row-injection of cattle slurry influence initial leaf N and P concentrations and final yield of silage maize
2022, European Journal of AgronomyCitation Excerpt :The results underline that initial leaf P concentrations and final yields only benefitted from slurry with a nitrification inhibitor, when slurry was placed near the maize row. This suggests that the beneficial effect of a nitrification inhibitor could be ascribed to high concentrations of NH4+ near the injection zone (Vogel et al., 2020; Westerschulte et al., 2016) that could stimulate early plant growth (Tauchnitz et al., 2021), but also improve P availability following NH4+ uptake due to the ammonium-induced proton release in the rhizosphere (Jing et al., 2010; Pedersen et al., 2019). The P surplus decreased significantly, when mineral starter P fertilizers were replaced by row-injected slurry.
- 1
Present address: Madrid Institute for Agricultural Research (IMIDRA), N-II km 38,200, 28800 Alcala de Henares, Spain.
- 2
Present address: School of Science and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay, Petrie, QLD 4502 Australia