Abstract
The aim of this work was to analyse the effect of K, P and N supplies on the yield of winter barley in a long-term mineral fertilisation experiment with clearly distinct soil nutrient supply levels in order to develop fertilisation guidelines for winter barley growers. The experiment was set up in 1989 on a chernozem meadow soil calcareous in the deeper layers, applying all possible combinations of 4 levels each of N, P and K fertiliser, giving a total of 64 treatments.
 The results of analyses performed in 2011 and 2012 can be summarised as follows:
 
 In 2011, when rainfall supplies were deficient in the shooting phase, improved K supplies (324 mg kg-1 AL-K2O) increased the grain yield, but in 2012, when rainfall supplies were more evenly distributed, K supply levels in the range 210–335 mg kg-1 AL-K2O had no significant influence on the yield of winter barley.
 An analysis of the P treatments revealed that, compared to the 119–133 mg kg-1 AL-P2O5 level (P0), better P supplies (186–251 mg kg-1) led to a significant increase in the grain yield.
 In both years rising N rates significantly increased the yield up to an annual N rate of 160 kg ha-1.
 
 4. A K×N interaction could only be detected in the nutrient supplies of winter barley in 2011. The yield-increasing effect of N fertiliser was more pronounced at better K supply levels, while K fertiliser led to higher yields in the case of better N supplies.
Highlights
Plants contain almost all the elements occurring in nature, but not all of these are required for their growth and physiological functions (Johnston, 2005)
In 2011, compared to the K0 treatment, the grain yield of winter barley was significantly enhanced by soil Al-K2O supplies of 346 mg kg-1 and was equivalent to the maximum yield (3.62 t ha-1)
At the K2 and K3 levels the yield did not differ significantly from that obtained in the K0 treatment, and an Al-K2O supply level of 346 mg kg-1 (K3) resulted in a substantial yield decline compared with the maximum yield
Summary
Plants contain almost all the elements occurring in nature, but not all of these are required for their growth and physiological functions (Johnston, 2005). Among the 16 nutrients essential for plants, nitrogen plays the most important role in increasing yields and in improving the value of plant products for human and animal nutrition (Aulakh and Malhi, 2004). A similar opinion was reported by Kádár (2014), who found phosphorus to be the second most important macroelement after nitrogen in nutrient management in Hungary. On soils with deficient supplies of phosphorus and potassium, plants give a poor response to nitrogen, which may even be negative. Many authors have reported that on soils with severe P deficiency the application of nitrogen alone had a negligible effect on the yield, while the joint application of nitrogen and phosphorus resulted in a significant rise in yields (Aulakh and Malhi, 2004). When winter barley was used as test plant on Ramann’s brown forest soil, Berhanu et al (2013) found that increasing N supplies improved the yield of barley when the humus content (1.6–1.7%) and P supplies (60–80 mg kg-1) were low and the K supplies moderate (140–160 mg kg-1)
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