Fate of 15N-labelled urea as affected by long-term manure substitution

Quantifying the fate of fertilizer nitrogen (N) is essential to develop more sustainable agricultural fertilization practices. However, the fate of chemical fertilizer N, particularly in long-term manure substitution treatment regimes, is not fully understood. The present study aimed to investigate the fate of 15N-labelled urea in a chemical fertilizer treatment (CF, 240 kg 15N ha−1) and N manure 50 % substitution treatment (1/2N + M, 120 kg 15N ha−1 + 120 kg manure N ha−1) in two continuous crop seasons, based on a 10-year long-term experiment in the North China Plain (NCP). The results showed that manure substitution greatly enhanced 15N use efficiency (15NUE) (39.9 % vs. 31.3 %) and suppressed 15N loss (6.9 % vs. 7.5 %) compared with the CF treatment in the first crop. However, the N2O emissions factor in the 1/2N + M treatment was increased by 0.1 % (0.5 kg 15N ha−1 for CF vs. 0.4 kg 15N ha−1 for 1/2N + M) compared with the CF treatment, although N leaching and NH3 volatilization rates decreased by 0.2 % (10.8 kg 15N ha−1 for CF vs. 5.1 kg 15N ha−1 for 1/2N + M) and 0.5 % (6.6 kg 15N ha−1 for CF vs. 2.8 kg 15N ha−1 for 1/2N + M), respectively. In which, only NH3 volatilization presented significantly difference between treatments. It is important to note that in the second crop, the residual 15N in soil (0–20 cm) remained mostly in the soil for the CF (79.1 %) and the 1/2N + M treatment (85.3 %), and contributed less to crop N uptake (3.3 % vs. 0.8 %) and leached losses (2.2 % vs. 0.6 %). This proved that manure substitution could enhance the stabilization of chemical N. These results suggested that long-term manure substitution effectively increases NUE, suppresses N loss, and improves N stabilization in soil, but negative impacts such as N2O emissions due to climate change should be investigated further.