Elsevier

Pedosphere

Volume 23, Issue 6, December 2013, Pages 835-843
Pedosphere

Natural 15N Abundance in Winter Wheat Amended with Urea and Compost: A Long-Term Experiment

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1002-0160(13)60075-2Get rights and content

Abstract

We investigated 15N abundance (δ15N) of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum cv. Jinmai 1) plants and soil at different growth stages in a field with a 13-year fertilization history of urea and compost, to determine whether or not the δ15N of plant parts can be used as an indicator of organic amendment with compost. Plant parts (roots, leaves, stems and grains) and soil were sampled at re-greening, jointing, grain filling and mature growth stages of winter wheat. There were significant differences between the urea and compost treatments in δ15N of whole plants, plant parts and soil over the whole growing season. Determination of the δ15N of plant parts was more convenient than that of whole plant to distinguish between the application of organic amendment and synthetic N fertilizer.

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      This contradictory result could be explained by the fact that most of grain N was reallocated from leaves and stems developed earlier during the growing stage. A 15N-labeling experiment conducted by Zhu et al. (2021) indicated that the transport amount of N from leaves and stems could account for >60 % of grain N. Furthermore, as indicated by Zhou et al. (2013), N translocation at the grain-filling stage followed the 14N priority and the 14N was preferentially transferred from leaves and stems to grains, leading to a decreased 15N value in grain, and in turn, an increased 15N value in leaves. Thus, grain δ15N might show less sensitivity to soil δ15N and N loss in the soil-plant system compared with leaf δ15N.

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      Indeed, the processes, through which the different forms of N (e.g. NH3, N2, NO, N2O, NO3) are lost to the environment, eventually leading to the enrichment of δ15N in the residual pool (including NH4+, NO3− and organic N) that remain in the soil (Robinson, 2001; Högberg, 1997). Although δ15N has been widely used in different studies as a discriminative factor in isotope modelling approaches, it has always been complicated to interpret the abundance of δ15N in different land uses (Zhou et al., 2013). It is due to the fact that the discriminative power of this signature highly depends on the type and the amount of N input or in other words, the N input-output balance in different land uses (Högberg and Johannisson, 1993).

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      In this context, variations in the δ15N of raw manure samples most likely reflect the magnitude of NH3 volatilization that the manure samples experienced before the measurement. The δ15N of composted livestock manure is more positive than that of raw manure; the mean δ15N of composted manure reported in the literature (Choi et al., 2002b, 2007b; Kriszan et al., 2009; Lim et al., 2007, 2010; Rapisarda et al., 2010; Yuan et al., 2012, 2014; Yun et al., 2006, 2011; Zhou et al., 2013) is +16.3 ± 0.8‰ (n = 59), ranging from +4.9 to +20.9‰ (two samples have extraordinarily high δ15N, greater than 40‰) with 90% of the samples having values between +8 and +20‰ (Fig. 2c and Table 1). The increase in the δ15N of composted manure over raw manure is due to the preferential loss of 14N during composting, particularly during the early period when N loss via NH3 volatilization is high (Kim et al., 2008; Parkinson et al., 2004).

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    Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 30870456 and 30911130503).

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