Abstract
Water storage pit irrigation (WSPI) has been proven effective in improving the water use efficiency of fruit trees in Loess Plateau, but so far there are still no matching efficient fertilization management methods. A two-year experiment was conducted to explore the management strategy of fertilization under the consideration of apple production and environmental sustainability. N isotope tracer technique was used to study the distribution of labelled nitrogen in soil, leaf, root and fruit. Moreover, the yield in different fertilizer managements were observed to evaluate the apple production. The results showed that increasing the amount of fertilizer could increase the accumulation of fertilizer nitrogen in soil, but also increased the risk of nitrogen leaching. Under the same amount of fertilizer, split fertilization can effectively increase of fertilizer nitrogen in soil by a mean of 4.7 times. Further, N300 application with split fertilization effectively increased apple yield. The yield of N300II treatment was higher than other treatment by maximum 68.5%. In addition, the root system mainly absorbed the fertilizer nitrogen applied in the current year, and the fruit mainly absorbed the fertilizer nitrogen applied in the previous year, but there was no significant difference in the leaves.
Highlights
The climate of the Loess Plateau in North China is dry, the temperature difference in the morning and evening is large, and the intensity of sunshine is high [1,2]
In low nitrogen application treatment (N300), the roots were more likely to use fertilizer nitrogen applicated in the current year, and the fruit was more likely to use that application in the previous year
Water storage pit irrigation can effectively reduce the accumulation of nitrogen in the shallow layer and reduce the risk of gas loss of fertilizer nitrogen
Summary
The climate of the Loess Plateau in North China is dry, the temperature difference in the morning and evening is large, and the intensity of sunshine is high [1,2]. These climatic characteristics have created one of China’s major premium apple producing regions [3,4]. The Loess Plateau in North China is windy all year round, and the salinity of irrigation water is high. In view of the challenges faced by the Loess Plateau in North China, water storage pit irrigation (WSPI) uses the Agronomy 2020, 10, 1386; doi:10.3390/agronomy10091386 www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
