Biological and chemical assays to estimate nitrogen supplying power of soils with contrasting management histories
D. Curtin A B and F. M. McCallum AA New Zealand Institute for Crop and Food Research Limited, Private Bag 4704, Christchurch, New Zealand.
B Corresponding author. Email: curtind@crop.cri.nz
Australian Journal of Soil Research 42(7) 737-746 https://doi.org/10.1071/SR03158
Submitted: 14 November 2003 Accepted: 27 April 2004 Published: 12 November 2004
Abstract
Nitrogen (N) mineralised from soil organic matter can be an important source of N for crop uptake, particularly following cultivation of pastures. Difficulty in predicting the contribution of mineralisation continues to be a serious obstacle to implementating best management practices for fertiliser N. We evaluated biological tests (i.e. net N mineralised in a 28-day aerobic incubation and anaerobically mineralisable N, AMN) and chemical tests (ammonium-N hydrolysis in hot 2 m KCl) as predictors of N supply to a glasshouse-grown oat (Avena sativa L.) crop. The oat plants were grown to maturity without added N on 30 soils representing a range of management histories, including soils collected from long-term pastures and intensive arable cropping sites. The majority (average 83%) of the N accumulated in grain and straw was mineralised N. Plant N derived from mineralisation (PNDM), estimated by subtracting soil mineral N at sowing from N uptake, was generally higher for long-term pasture soils (mean 82 mg/kg, n = 9) than for long-term arable soils (mean 48 mg/kg, n = 9). The 2 measures of N mineralisation were not closely related [R2 = 0.11 (0.37*** when one outlying observation was omitted)], indicating that aerobic and anaerobic assays can give quite different N fertility rankings. Aerobically mineralisable N was the best predictor of PNDM (R2 = 0.79***). The ratio of CO2-C evolved to net N mineralised in the aerobic incubation was highly variable (e.g. mean of 13.6 for pasture soils v. 7.5 for long-term arable soils), likely due to differences in N immobilisation. The correlations of AMN (R2 = 0.32**) and hot KCl N (R2 = 0.24**) with PNDM were not much better than that between total soil N and PNDM (R2 = 0.16*), suggesting that these tests would not provide reliable estimates of N mineralisation potential in soils with diverse management histories.
Additional keywords: N mineralisation, plant N uptake, hot KCl-extractable N, microbial biomass, N immobilisation, incubation assays.
Acknowledgments
Funding for this work was provided by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (contracts C02X0024 and C020218) and the New Zealand Fertiliser Manufacturers’ Research Association. We thank Charles Wright for technical assistance and Ruth Butler for statistical advice.
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