Fertilizer Nitrogen and Corn Plants: Not all Volatilized Ammonia is Lost
2018
Schoninger, Evandro Luiz | González‐Villalba, Hugo Abelardo | Bendassolli, José Albertino | Ocheuze Trivelin, Paulo Cesar
CORE IDEAS: Corn plants absorb volatilized ammonia from urea.Foliar area controls ammonia absorption.Not all N‐fertilizer emitted as ammonia can be considered lost. Plants can absorb NH₃ from the atmosphere through the foliage, potentially recovering part of the volatilized N from N fertilizers. To measure the extent of corn (Zea mays L.) foliar uptake of NH₃ derived from surface applied urea at different growth stages and study the relationship between the amount of NH₃ uptake and corn leaf area, a field experiment was set up during the 2011–2012 and the 2012–2013 growing seasons. The experiment was developed in a complete randomized blocks design with four replications. Treatments consisted of five sidedress N application times (growth stages V4, V6, V8, V10, and V12) using ¹⁵N‐labeled urea. The percentage of volatilized N (VN), the percentage of volatilized N recovered by the plant (PVNP), and the leaf area (LA) at each N application time were evaluated. Using the tray method, the VN varied from 23 to 68% of the total N applied, given these differences mainly related to climatic conditions (i.e., rainfall occurrence). On average for the two growing seasons, measured PVNP values were 3.4, 5.5, 6.2, 9.0, and 14.8% at V4, V6, V8, V10, and V12 growth stages, respectively. Approximately 90% of the total N uptake (¹⁵NH₃, by the foliage) was allocated in the leaves and 10% in the stem. We found a high correlation between LA and PVNP (r² = 0.92, p ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, corn plants can take up part of the surface applied fertilizer‐derived (urea) NH₃, up to values of 15% of the volatilized N–NH₃.
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