Fate of urea-nitrogen from cattle urine in a pasture-crop sequence in a seasonally dry tropical environment

Abstract

The fate of urea-N in cattle urine applied during the dry season (in August) to the pasture phase of a pasture-crop sequence at Katherine, N.T., was investigated. Cattle urine labelled with 15N-urea was applied to three sets of microplots to measure the following parameters: (a) amount and distribution of 15N remaining in the microplots during the remainder of the dry season with 0, 0.5, 1.0 and 5.0 t ha-1 of pasture residues present initially; (b) the effect of placing the urine 5 cm below the soil surface on the amount of 15N remaining during the dry season; (c) uptake of 15N by the pasture during the early part of the wet season (October to December) and uptake by sorghum sown directly into the killed pasture in January. Residual 15N in the surface soil (0-15 cm) after the sorghum crop was also measured. Of the applied 15N, 26% was lost after 1 day, 32% after 7 days and 46% after 63 days. Losses were not affected by the amount of pasture residues on the microplots when the urine was applied. Almost all of the I5N remaining in the microplots was in the 0-7.5-cm layer of soil, and 65-75% of this was mineral N. The dry-season losses of 15N were presumably through volatilization of ammonia, because leaching was absent and no loss of 15N occurred when the urine was placed 5 cm below the soil surface. Pasture growth killed at the end of December contained 6.2% of the applied 15N, the sorghum crop recovered only a further 2.1%, and after harvest of the sorghum crop the 0-15.0-cm layer of soil contained 23%. Thus about half of the 15N remaining in the soil-plant system to the 15.0 cm soil depth at the end of the dry season disappeared during the following wet season, either as a gaseous loss or by leaching deeper into the soil.