ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1598110
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Agricultural Water Management: Techniques for Improving Crop Water Efficiency and SustainabilityView all 13 articles
Effects of subsurface drip irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer management on N2O emissions and forage yield in alfalfa production
Provisionally accepted
- Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China
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In this two-year field experiment, the effects of three irrigation rates (W1, 375 mm; W2, 525 mm; W3, 675 mm) and five nitrogen (N) fertilizer application rates (N0, 0 kg N ha -1 ; N1, 75 kg N ha -1 ; N2, 150 kg N ha -1 ; N3, 225 kg N ha -1 ; N4, 300 kg N ha -1 ) on alfalfa yield, quality, resource use efficiency, and N2O emissions were explored. The results showed that irrigation combined with N application resulted in greater N2O emissions than irrigation alone. The cumulative N2O emissions increased with the increase of irrigation rate, and the average maximum cumulative N2O emissions of the W3 treatment (0.58 kg ha -1 ) increased by 94.14% and 57.38% compared with that of the W2 and W1 treatment, respectively.The cumulative N2O emissions also increased with the increase of the N application rate, and the average cumulative N2O emissions of the N4 treatment (0.69 kg ha -1 ) increased by 31.99%, 62.87%, 108%, and 173% compared with that of the N3, N2, N1, and N0 treatments, respectively. The variation of the average N2O emission coefficient was similar to that of the cumulative N2O emissions, and the W3 treatment (5.46) and N4 treatment (4.84) had the largest coefficients. Yield, crude protein, crop water productivity (WPc), and N2O emissions increased with the increase of N application rate, regardless of irrigation rate, with maxima occurring at N2 or N3 levels. These results suggest that the low NUE may be caused by the high cumulative N2O emissions. Besides, the combination of the irrigation rate 525 mm and the N application rate 150-225 kg N ha -1 could significantly increase alfalfa yield and crude protein content compared to other irrigation and nitrogen application treatments. However, further increasing irrigation and N rates failed to obtain further yield and crude protein increases, but led to N2O emission increase and WPc and NUE reductions.
Keywords: Nitrogen utilisation, Environmental Pollution, Resource utilization efficiency, Crude protein, yield
Received: 22 Mar 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Sun, Zhang and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Quan Sun, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China
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