Short CommunicationSubstituting organic manure for compound fertilizer increases yield and decreases NH3 and N2O emissions in an intensive vegetable production systems
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer plays an important role in meeting the growing food demand for the increasing population in China over the past three decades (Gu et al., 2015; Li et al., 2013). However, an unreasonable use of N fertilizer in China has caused a series of environmental problems, including soil degradation, air and aquatic pollution (Ju et al., 2009). It is estimated >30% of applied N fertilizer is lost to the atmosphere via N losses, such as nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions (Cui et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2016) and ammonia (NH3) volatilization (Bai et al., 2018; Gu et al., 2016), and also hydrological N losses (Fang et al., 2015; Diaz and Rosenberg, 2008; Ju et al., 2009).
To deal with the environmental issues caused by an unsustainable management of N fertilizer, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture released the policy of “zero growth of fertilizer by 2020” plan in 2015. This governmental plan highlights the necessity of adopting improved N fertilizer management in croplands (Cui et al., 2013; Gu et al., 2017; Ju et al., 2009; Xia et al., 2017), such as adopting the substitution of organic manure for synthetic fertilizer (Xia et al., 2017). Currently, the proportion of livestock manure recycling to cropland in China on is only approximately 43% (Gu et al., 2015).
Increasing manure recycling could mitigate the adverse effects of manure storage on the environment (Bennetzen et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2017). A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that substituting organic manure for synthetic fertilizer could increase crop productivity by 6.8% (Xia et al., 2017). However, regarding gaseous N emissions, inconsistent results regarding the effects of manure substitution on NH3 and N2O emissions were observed in previous studies (Xia et al., 2017; Chadwick et al., 2011; Owen et al., 2015). This scenario could be largely attributed to the difference in manure management practices before field application (Neerackal et al., 2015; Holly et al., 2017). Various manure management practices (e.g., composting, anaerobic digestion and solid-liquid separation) lead to the difference in manure components and quality (e.g. C/N ratio), inevitably affecting NH3 and N2O emissions from downstream processes associated with field application (Duncan et al., 2017; Evans et al., 2018; Holly et al., 2017; Xia et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018). This highlights the importance of keeping track of emissions throughout manure management and its application to field (Holly et al., 2017; Owen et al., 2015; Zhong et al., 2013). However, comprehensive evaluation of the effects of substituting organic manure for N fertilizer on crop yield and gaseous N emissions throughout the manure life-cycle production and utilization has rarely been conducted. Moreover, previous studies only focused on staple food crops (i.e. wheat, rice and maize) rather than vegetables (Thelen et al., 2010; Xia et al., 2016; Xia et al., 2017; Zhong et al., 2013).
Vegetable production, accounting for 13.5% of the cultivated area of China in 2015 (Min and Shi, 2018; Huang et al., 2016), is characterized by a shorter growth period, 3–6 times higher synthetic N fertilizer inputs, and higher economic value compared with staple food crop production (Fan et al., 2018; Ju et al., 2009). This also produces much higher gases (e.g., N2O and NH3) emissions (Gong et al., 2013; Li et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2017), and consequently results in lower fertilizer use efficiency (Ju et al., 2009). Studies that explored the effects of different organic manure species on vegetable yield and gaseous N emissions are scarce (Liu et al., 2015; Xia et al., 2017). Therefore, we conducted a field experiment to investigate the effect of substituting organic manure for compound fertilizer on yield, as well as N2O and NH3 emissions in an intensive vegetable production system in China. Our hypotheses were: 1) Substituting organic manure for compound fertilizer increases vegetable yield and reduces N2O and NH3 emissions; 2) the intensities of such effects are affected by the organic manure species.
Section snippets
Experiment sites
The experiment was conducted in a typical greenhouse in a rapeseed cropping system in Daxing district, Beijing, China (39°26′N, 116°13′E) (Fig. 1). During this period, the mean temperature inside greenhouse is 26.8 °C, with the lowest temperature of 24.8 °C and the highest of 30.2 °C. The topsoil (0–20 cm depth) in the greenhouse has a pH of 7.3, and contains 28.2 g kg−1 organic matter, 0.55 mg kg−1 NH4-N, 93.47 mg kg−1 NO3-N, and 2.5 g kg−1 total N.
Experimental design
The experiment divided into fertilizer
The NH3 volatilization and N2O emission under fertilizer production
NH3 volatilization in four manure treatments rapidly reached their peaks after three days since the commencement of the manure storage (Fig. 2), consistent with previous results (Wang et al., 2014; Yuan et al., 2014). This phenomenon can be explained by the rising temperature and NH4-N at the beginning of fermentation of the mixed swine manure and straw (Pagans et al., 2006; Yuan et al., 2014). Three days later, NH3 volatilization from the four treatments showed a decreasing trend with some
Conclusion
We comprehensively estimated the effects of substituting different organic manure species for compound fertilizer on yield, NH3 and N2O emissions in a rapeseed-cropping system. We found that these effects were dependent on the organic manure species. Substituting stored swine fertilizer mixed with biochar effectively reduced gaseous N losses and increased rapeseed yield and N uptake and seems to be a promising management practice in comparison with other organic manure species. However, we also
Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFE0101100, 2016YFD0201204, 2017YFF0211701, 2017 YFF0211702), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41671303), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M631500).
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Indicates the equally contribution of authors to this work.