Abstract
Urea is the main form of fertilizer nitrogen applied to wetland rice. As part of an effort to evaluate the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers, conventional urea and modified urea products such as sulfur-coated urea (SCU), urea supergranules (USG), and sulfur-coated urea supergranules (SCUSG) were compared with ammonium sulfate on an Aquic Tropudalf at the experimental farm of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. The sulfur-coated materials were prepared in the laboratory and were not completely representative of commercial SCU. Two experiments were conducted in the wet season (1978, 1979) and one in the dry season (1979). All fertilizers were labeled with 5% or 10% excess15N so that the fertilizer-N balance at two or three sampling times during the growing season could be constructed and the magnitude of N loss assessed. The SCU, USG, and SCUSG were applied at transplanting, and the whole dose of nitrogen was15N-labeled. The urea and ammonium sulfate applications were split: two-thirds was broadcast and incorporated at transplanting, and one-third was broadcast at panicle initiation; only the initial dose was15N-labeled.
Deep-point placement (10 cm) of urea supergranules (USG) between the rice hills consistently provided the highest plant recovery of15N in all experiments and at all harvest times; recoveries ranged from 48% to 75% with an average of approximately 58% at maturity. Among the fertilizers broadcast and incorporated before transplanting, average plant recoveries of15N were only approximately 34% and 26% from urea and ammonium sulfate, respectively. Plant recovery of15N from the broadcast and incorporated SCU (37%) was far inferior to that from USG. Sulfur coating of supergranules did not improve plant recovery over USG alone although sulfur coating delayed the plant uptake of15N from the USG.
The15N not accounted for in the plant and soil was presumed lost. Loss of N from urea and ammonium sulfate was high (63%) in the dry season. Coating with sulfur gave a slight improvement, and deep placement of USG and SCUSG greatly reduced the losses. Losses of N were substantially lower in the wet season than in the dry season for broadcast and incorporated urea, SCU, and ammonium sulfate (9%–30%), whereas losses from deep-placed urea remained more or less the same as in the dry season. Net immobilization of15N from the broadcast fertilizers in the wet season ranged from 49% to 53% in the first experiment and from 16% to 32% in the second experiment, presumably because of aquatic weeds and green algae; immobilization was proportionally less at higher rates of fertilizer application. Deep placement reduced the extent of15N immobilization in the soil plus roots to less than 21% in all experiments.
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Craswell, E., De Datta, S., Weeraratne, C. et al. Fate and efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers applied to wetland rice. I. The Philippines. Fertilizer Research 6, 49–63 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01058164
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01058164