Optimizing water and nitrogen management to reduce basal nitrogen inputs, improve nitrogen uptake and utilization efficiencies, and achieve high yields and low soil nitrate residue in wheat production

Abstract

Excessive basal nitrogen (N) inputs and improper water management limit both wheat yields and N use efficiency. Thus, a field experiment was conducted for two years to evaluate whether optimizing water and N management could reduce basal N inputs, improve N uptake and utilization efficiencies (NUpE and NUtE), and achieve high yields. A split-plot design was employed with water and N management as the main plots (conventional water and N management, CM; and drip fertigation, DF) and basal N rates as the sub-plots (150, 125, 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0 ​kg ​ha⁻¹, designated as B150, B125, B100, B75, B50, B25, and B0, respectively), while maintaining a fixed topdressing N rate of 150 ​kg ​ha⁻¹. The results showed that DF increased the average yield by 12.7-15.9% compared with CM due to improvements in N absorption, tillering ability, ear and grain numbers, leaf area index, and biomass production. More importantly, DF reduced the sensitivity of yield to the basal N rate. Halving the basal N rate from B150 to B75 reduced the yield by 4.1-4.3% under DF (P ​> ​0.05), but the yield loss was 10.9-11.4% under CM (P ​< ​0.05). Under DF, the increased grain weight compensated for the reduced grains m⁻², but under CM, the 17.3-17.8% reduction in grains m⁻² was not fully offset by the increase of 8.4-9.9% in the grain weight. In addition, the increased NUpE and NUtE also contributed to relatively high yield at B75 under DF. Furthermore, the NO₃⁻-N residue under DF was 7.9-9.8% lower at B75 than at B150. In conclusion, DF combined with a reduced basal N rate is effective for increasing wheat production, while decreasing soil nitrate residual levels to mitigate environmental impacts.

Keywords

Basal nitrogen rate / Drip fertigation / Nitrogen use efficiency / Soil nitrate / Wheat / Yield

Abbreviations

BN	basal nitrogen rate
CM	conventional water and nitrogen management
CV	coefficient of variation
DF	drip fertigation
LAI	leaf area index
N	nitrogen
NUpE	nitrogen uptake efficiency
NUtE	nitrogen utilization efficiency
SPAD	leaf relative chlorophyll content
WN	water and nitrogen management

Availability of data and materials

Data will be shared upon request by the readers.

Authors' contribution

Wen Li: Writing-original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Yuyan Fan: Software, Investigation. Qiu Yang: Software, Investigation. Wen Lin: Writing-review & editing, Validation, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Jianfu Xue: Writing-review & editing, Validation, Formal analysis, Project administration. Yuechao Wang: Writing-review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Zhiqiang Gao: Writing-review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

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.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministerial and Provincial Co-Innovation Centre for Endemic Crop Production with High-Quality and Efficiency in Loess Plateau (SBGJXTZX-38), Shanxi Fundamental Research Program (202203021222157 and 202303021222074), Shanxi Province Major Science and Technology Special Project (202301140601014-06), and Science and Technology Innovation Project 2023 of Jinzhong National Agricultural High-tech Zone (Taigu National Science and Technology Innovation Center).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crope.2025.11.001.

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