Mulching and nitrogen are critical drivers of crop production for smallholders of the Loess Plateau in China. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of mulching and nitrogen fertilizer on the soil water content, soil nitrate-N content and vertical distribution in maize root-zone. The experiment was conducted over two consecutive years and used randomly assigned field plots with...

C urrently recommended N management in North Carolina and elsewhere in the humid southeastern USA is based on realistic yield expectations (RYE). In North Carolina, N recommendations based on RYE are made from a database of RYE by soil map unit or based on a grower's documented historic yields (the average of the best three yields during a 5-yr period; North Carolina Nutrient Management Workgro...

Soil organic matter (SOM) is essential for sustaining food production and maintaining ecosystem services and is a vital resource base for storing C and N. The impact of long-term use of synthetic fertilizer N on SOM, however, has been questioned recently. Here we tested the hypothesis that long-term application of N results in a decrease in SOM. We used data from 135 studies of 114 long-term ex...

Excessive nitrate leaching from the U.S. Corn Belt has created serious water quality problems and contributed to the expansion of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. We evaluated the effect of implementing the late spring nitrate test (LSNT) for corn (Zea mays L.) grown within a 400-ha, tile-drained subbasin in central Iowa. Surface water discharge and NO3 concentrations from the treated su...

Upland rice is typically grown under slash-and-burn systems in the mountainous regions of northern Laos by resource-poor farmers for subsistence. Upland rice cultivars are all traditional and no fertilizer inputs are used. In these systems, grain yields average only 1.7 t/ha. A multi-site experiment was conducted in Luang Prabang province to examine cultivar and fertilizer effects on grain yiel...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from a maize field in the North China Plain (Wangdu County, Hebei Province, China) were investigated using static chambers during two consecutive maize growing seasons in the 2008 and 2009. The N2O pulse emissions occurred with duration of about 10 days after basal and additional fertilizer applications in the both years. The average N20 fluxes from the CK (control...

We conducted a controlled experiment to test the plant vigor and the plant stress hypotheses. The two hypotheses associate plant physiological conditions to insect feeding mode and performance. We exposed tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, to different types of growing conditions: optimal (vigorous plants), resource based stress (water and/or nutrient deficit), and physical stress (punched hole i...

In order to evaluate the variations of some morphological traits, yield, seed yield components and essential oil yield of German Chamomile under different application levels of nitrogen (N) and biofertilizers, a split plot experiment laid out in a randomized complete blocks design with three replications in Shar-e-Ray (Gale No) region. Chemical N fertilizer application in three levels (0, 65 an...