A preliminary determination of the plot-scale fertilization tolerance of an Entisol in southwest China

2021 
Purple soil of China is suitable for planting a variety of food and cash crops, owing to its rich nutrients and high natural fertility. In purple soil areas, farmers often apply excessive fertilizers to fields to maintain yields in continuous cropping systems. However, excessive fertilizer application can result in high nutrient concentrations in soils and nutrient pollution in the water environment. The fertilization tolerance (FT) of purple soil should be determined by considering critical values to both maximize crop production and minimize environmental risk of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loss. In this study, farmland fields with 18% slope plots planted with the typical crop of corn (Zea mays L.) were used to investigate the effects of varied fertilizer application levels on crop yields and the main soil fertility indexes, as well as on N and P loss from purple soil. The main results showed that corn yield increased with fertilization level when the fertilization amount ranged from 375 to 1,500 kg ha−1 and declined with overfertilization (1,875 kg ha−1). The grain yield, which increased with fertilization levels in 2011, was not significantly higher than in 2012 (p > 0.05), while the 1,000 grain weight in 2011 was significantly higher than in 2012 (p
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