N application to winter wheat at tillering and shooting: N balance at different growth stages

At two sites, microplots under winter wheat were given 140 kg N ha^–1 as labelled ammonium nitrate split in 80 kg N ha^–1 at tillering and 60 kg N ha^–1 at shooting. Soil and plant samples were analyzed at shooting, after anthesis and at grain harvest and a¹⁵N balance was established. The average recovery rate of 95% indicates that there were no marked N losses due to leaching and denitrification, which is attributed to the low rainfall in the two months after fertilizer application. Between 19 and 23% of the fertilizer N remained in the 0–30 cm soil layer as organically bound soil N. Up to 64% was taken up by the above-ground crop. On the loamy sand, 4% of the fertilizer N at harvest remained in the roots in the 0–30 cm layer and only 3% was found as inorganic N in the 0–90 cm soil layer. The fertilizer N applied diminished plant uptake of soil N in the period between fertilizer application and harvest. As compared with the control, the fertilized plants extracted 25 and 28% less soil N from loamy sand and loess soil, respectively. The results show that application of mineral N fertilizer helps to maintain the mineralizable N content of the soil, which has been accumulated in the course of long-term intensive crop production, by adding N to the soil organic pool and simultaneously reducing the supply of soil N to the plants.