Turnover of residual 15N-labelled fertilizer N in soil following harvest of oilseed rape (t Brassica napus L.)

Abstract

We studied the fate of 15N-labelled fertilizer nitrogen in a sandy loam soil after harvest of winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus L. cv. Ceres) given 100 or 200 kg N ha-1 in spring, with or without irrigation. Our main objective was to quantify the temporal variations of the soil mineral N, the extractable soil organic N and soil microbial biomass N, and fertilizer derived N in these pools during autumn and winter. Nitrogen use efficiency of the oilseed rape crop varied from 47% of applied N in the 100N, irrigated treatment to 34% in the 200N, non-irrigated treatment. However, only in the latter treatment did we find significantly higher fertilizer derived soil mineral N than in the three other treatments which all had low soil mineral N contents at the first sampling after harvest (8 days after stubble tillage). Between 31% and 42% of the applied N could not be accounted for in the harvested plants or 0-15 cm soil layer at this first sampling. Over the following autumn and winter none of the remaining fertilizer derived soil N was lost from the 0–5 cm depth, but from the 5–15 cm depth a marked proportion of N derived from fertilizer was lost, probably by leaching. Negligible amounts of fertilizer derived extractable soil organic and mineral N (<1 kg N ha-1, 0-15 cm) were found in all treatments after the first sampling.