Recovery of 15N‐labelled fertilizer in crops, drainage water and soil using monolith lysimeters in south‐east Nigeria

Abstract

SUMMARYLabelled urea was applied to monolith lysimeters in the 1st year of a 2‐year experiment at Onne in south‐east Nigeria. On eight lysimeters maize and rice were grown in each of the 2 years. Four lysimeters were similarly cropped in the 2nd year after being uncropped in the 1st year. Measurements were made over the 2‐year period of labelled and unlabelled mineral nitrogen in the drainage water, and labelled and unlabelled nitrogen in the crops. At the end of the experiment, weeds and the soil were also analysed for labelled and unlabelled nitrogen.The total recovery of 15N in crop, soil and leachate varied between 70 and 93%. It was lowest when applied to the second season rice crop, which recovered only 15%, and highest when it was leached in the 1st year or was taken up by the maize crop. The highest crop uptake was 31%. The results indicate that, depending on the treatment, between 10 and 30% of the 15N was immobilized in the soil, lysimeters cropped in the 1st year lost between 22 and 29% of the 15N in drainage water, and between 7 and 30% was lost by denitrification. The accuracy of these figures is discussed.