Assessment of Greenhouse Gases Emission in Maize-Wheat Cropping System Under Varied N Fertilizer Application Using Cool Farm Tool

Rakesh Kumar,Abhay Kumar,Asisan Minz,Jitendra Singh,Arvind Kumar,S Karmakar

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2021.710108

Rakesh Kumar, Abhay Kumar + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.710108

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Abstract

In recent decades, climate change induced by enhanced global warming is one of the biggest challenges at the global level. Agriculture sectors significantly contribute to total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission to the atmosphere. Wheat and maize, cultivated globally, and consumed in different forms, are considered as crucial staple cereal for ensuring food security to global population. The management practices involving land preparation, sowing, fertilizer application, irrigation, pest management, etc. significantly influence the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from agricultural soil. In this study, CO2and N2O emission were assessed from maize and wheat crops at four different levels of N fertilizer using cool farm tool model. Emissions of CO2per hectare varied from 331.4 to 1,088.3 kgCO2in maize and ranged from 292.3 to 765.3 kgCO2in wheat on application of different doses of N. The total GHG emission in maize crops ranged from 859.5 to 3,003.4 kgCO2eq per hectare with the application of nitrogen at varying levels (0–240 kg N per hectare). The highest N2O efflux (0.368 kg per ton) was observed at 240 kg N per hectare under wheat crop. The total on-farm emissions, through fertilizer production, account for about 33.7%, and emission of N2O contributes only 65.9%, whereas pesticides account merely 0.4% under maize-wheat cropping. This study confirms that the direct emission of N2O was totally dependent on N fertilizers application rate; however, the indirect emission was controlled by the fuels and energy consumption.

Highlights

The production of food grains is being adversely affected by climate change, and agricultural activities leading to emission of methane (CH4), carbon di-oxide (CO2), and nitrous oxide (N2O) (Malyan et al, 2021) serve as a major contributing factor to future climate change
The research field was located at 23°19’ N and 83°17’ E, at altitude of 625 m above mean sea level (MASL) in the Chhotanagpur Plateau, which comes under the eastern section of the Deccan plateau and situated under Agroclimatic Zone V
CO2 emitted by maize grown during the wet season emission ranged from 331.4 to 1,088.1 kg ha−1, while in wheat it varied from 292.3 to 765.3 kg ha−1 depending on the application rates of nitrogen fertilizer (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

The production of food grains (maize, rice, wheat, etc.) is being adversely affected by climate change, and agricultural activities leading to emission of methane (CH4), carbon di-oxide (CO2), and nitrous oxide (N2O) (Malyan et al, 2021) serve as a major contributing factor to future climate change. In India, fertilizer recommendation is based on response of a crop over a broad geographical area which could not concede the spatial variation in soil nutrient supplying ability (Majumdar et al, 2013). It is a well known fact that aeration, soil temperature, soil moisture, organic carbon (OC) supplies, fertilization, pH, and other environmental factors like production and transport influence N2O and CO2 emission in soil (Kumar and Sharma, 2017a; Kumar et al, 2020a; Fagodiya et al, 2020a)

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