Abstract
Nitrogen fertilization is one of the important agricultural practices for increasing crops production in modern farming. Excessive nitrogen fertilization without scientific guidance can also cause serious environmental problems. Therefore, the improvement of nitrogen management is critical for further sustainable agricultural development. In most areas of China and South Asia, the rice-wheat system is widely spread due to high precipitation. Since there are various lengths of rice flooding stages, nitrogen management is different compared with upland cultivation systems.
We review the characteristics of the general rice–wheat system, nitrogen transformation and existing techniques for nitrogen management. Less than 40% of the nitrogen applied is used by crops, with the other 60% being lost via denitrification (15–42% of total nitrogen application), ammonia volatilization (1–47%), runoff (5%) and leaching (2%). Thus, nitrogen transformations under actual soil conditions must be studied to improve nitrogen use efficiency and reduce losses.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Aijing Yin offering valuable suggestions that improved the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge data support by Yixing Long-term Experiment Site that made this review possible. Data collection and analysis were undertaken as a part of research project funded by the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (2016YFD0801101), the National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (41501320) and the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest (201503106).
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Yu, Y., Yang, L., Hou, P., Xue, L., Odindo, A.O. (2018). Nitrogen Management in the Rice–Wheat System of China and South Asia. In: Lichtfouse, E. (eds) Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 32. Sustainable Agriculture Reviews, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98914-3_6
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