Relationship between nitrogen uptake and use efficiency of winter wheat grown in the North China Plain
R. F. Wang A D , D. G. An A E , C. S. Hu A , L. H. Li B , Y. M. Zhang A , Y. G. Jia A and Y. P. Tong C E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Centre for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetic and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang 050021, China.
B Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China.
C The State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
D Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China.
E Corresponding authors. Email: andiaoguo@163.com or yptong@genetics.ac.cn
Crop and Pasture Science 62(6) 504-514 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP10383
Submitted: 3 December 2010 Accepted: 11 May 2011 Published: 7 July 2011
Abstract
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars with improved nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) under low and medium N conditions will help to minimise production costs and nitrate-N contamination. The study was conducted to determine the NUE diversities of winter wheat genotypes, and to evaluate the possible physiological mechanisms contributing to these differences. A set of 12 winter wheat genotypes, including S4185 as control genotype, were grown at high N (applied with 180 kg N/ha as urea) and low N (with no N fertiliser, N-deficient) plots in 2005–06 and 2007–08 growing seasons (i.e. four environments). ANOVA showed significant differences among genotypes for all traits measured. Among genotypes, XJ19-1 had significantly higher NUE and N uptake efficiency (NUpE) than S4185 at the two N levels in the 2 years (P < 0.05). KN9204 had significantly higher NUE in the four environments and higher NUpE in three out of four environments than S4185 (P < 0.05). WR9603 and XJ138-1 had higher NUE and NUpE than S4185 in two or three out of four environments (P < 0.05). XJ19-1, KN9204, WR9603 and XJ138-1 also showed higher grain yield (GY) and aboveground dry matter (DM) than S4185 in at least two environments (P < 0.05). KN9204 were 45.7 and 23.1% higher in root dry weight (RDW) of the top 40-cm soil profile compared with J411 at high N and low N plots, respectively (P < 0.05). In addition, there was a highly positive correlation between RDW and grain N yield (GNY) of KN9204 and J411 (P < 0.01). Closely positive correlation between NUE and GY, DM, GNY and NUpE at both N levels in the 2 years (P < 0.01), and between N utilisation efficiency (NUtE) and NUE only at high N plot (P < 0.05) were found. Our results indicated that NUpE was the important factor of NUE under low N conditions, and both NUpE and NUtE were the most important NUE components under high N conditions.
Additional keywords: correlation coefficients, genotype variation, grain nitrogen concentration, nitrogen-use efficiency, root dry weight, spike numbers per plant.
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