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Nitrogen balances of smallholder farms in major cropping systems in a peri-urban area of Beijing, China

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Abstract

An in-depth understanding of nutrient management variability on the regional scale is urgently required due to rapid changes in cropping patterns and farmers’ resource use in peri-urban areas of China. The soil surface nitrogen (N) balances of cereal, orchard and vegetable systems were studied over a 2-year period on smallholder fields in a representative peri-urban area of Beijing. Positive soil surface N balances were obtained across all three cropping systems. The mean annual N surplus of the vegetable system was 1,575 kg N ha−1 year−1, or approximately 3 times the corresponding values in the cereal (531 kg N ha−1 year−1) and orchard systems (519 kg N ha−1 year−1). In the vegetable system, animal manure (1,443 kg N ha−1 year−1 on average) was the major source of N input (65 % of the total N input) and the factor with strongest impact on the N surplus. In the cereal system, however, about 74 % of the total N input originated from mineral fertilizer application which was the major contributor to the N surplus, while in the orchard system, the N surplus was strongly and positively correlated with both mineral fertilizer and animal manure applications. Furthermore, within each cropping system, N fertilization, crop yields and N balances showed large variations among different smallholder fields, especially in orchard and vegetable systems. This study highlights that differences in farming practices within or among cropping systems should be taken into account when calculating nutrient balances and designing strategies of integrated nutrient management on a regional scale.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by two Sino-German projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF FKZ: 0330847B; 01RD1017A) together with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST grant no. 2009DFA32710) and a special fund for agriculture profession of China (201103003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Science, Agricultural University of Hebei, Baoding, 071001, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Hou, Zhiling Gao & Wenqi Ma

  2. Institute of Geoecology, Technische Universität Braunschweig, 38106, Braunschweig, Germany

    Lisa Heimann, Marco Roelcke & Rolf Nieder

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  1. Yong Hou
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  2. Zhiling Gao
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  3. Lisa Heimann
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  4. Marco Roelcke
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  5. Wenqi Ma
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Correspondence to Wenqi Ma.

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Hou, Y., Gao, Z., Heimann, L. et al. Nitrogen balances of smallholder farms in major cropping systems in a peri-urban area of Beijing, China. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst 92, 347–361 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-012-9494-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-012-9494-0

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