Nitrogen fertiliser requirements of high-yielding irrigated transgenic cotton
Ian J. Rochester A and Michael Bange A BA CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Locked Bag 59, Narrabri, NSW 2390, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: Michael.Bange@csiro.au
Crop and Pasture Science 67(6) 641-648 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP15278
Submitted: 23 July 2015 Accepted: 20 January 2016 Published: 28 June 2016
Abstract
Nitrogen (N) fertiliser is almost universally used in high-yielding irrigated cotton, but it is not used efficiently in many instances. Predicting the economic optimal amount of N fertiliser is difficult and often little N fertiliser is required where situations have provided access to N through excessive N fertiliser being applied to previous cotton crops, conditions promoting significant N mineralisation, or if legume rotation crops were grown. The economic optimum N fertiliser rate (Nopt – where the marginal cost of N fertiliser (at $1.50 kg–1 N) equalled the return on cotton lint (at $2.20 kg–1) was determined in eight experiments conducted over 8 years; Nopt ranged from 0 to 248 kg N ha–1, lint yields ranged from 1.3 to 3.4 t ha–1, crop N uptake ranged from 96 to 321 kg N ha–1 and apparent N fertiliser recovery (calculated by dividing the difference in crop N uptake between N-fertilised and unfertilised plots by the N fertiliser applied) ranged from 20% to 98% of N applied. A positive response to N fertiliser application in lint yield was evident in 7 of the 8 years. Both lint yield and crop N uptake were positively correlated with pre-sowing soil nitrate concentration. Cotton that yielded 1.4 t lint ha–1 derived 78% of crop N from the soil, whereas at 3.4 t lint ha–1, 69% of crop N was derived from soil; this indicated the importance of N supplied from the soil and the relatively lesser reliance on the N fertiliser applied, even for very high-yielding cotton. A multiple regression model, using the parameters of pre-sowing soil nitrate, crop N uptake and lint yield, more accurately represented the data generated in this study in estimating the economic optimum N fertiliser rate (r2 = 0.80).
Additional keywords: fertiliser use-efficiency, nitrogen nutrition.
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