IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agisys/v99y2008i1p53-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nitrogen flow and use efficiency in production and utilization of wheat, rice, and maize in China

Author

Listed:
  • Ma, Wenqi
  • Li, Jianhui
  • Ma, Lin
  • Wang, Fanghao
  • Sisák, István
  • Cushman, Gregory
  • Zhang, Fusuo

Abstract

China has long been the world's most populous nation and faced the double challenge of ensuring its food security without causing catastrophic damage to the environment. Since the early 1960s, Chinese agricultural development has been premised on large domestic increases in nitrogen (N) fertilizer production and consumption. However, current utilization of fertilizer is far beyond optimum, with the fate of excess N largely unknown. Here, we report on N flows, losses, and use efficiency in the production and utilization of three major grain crops using data from 2004. We also use a scenario analysis to explore strategies for improving N use efficiency. Our calculations show that N use efficiency in food production and utilization is much lower than previously published estimates. Mean N surpluses of crop fields were 144Â kg/ha for wheat, 184Â kg/ha for rice, and 120Â kg/ha for maize. We estimate that between 50% and 85% of N harvested as grain is lost for utilization by humans and animals. Fertilizer N use efficiency (FNUE) values in crop-animal system for wheat, rice, and maize were 13.4%, 11.3%, and 3.7%, respectively. This means 7.5, 8.9 and 27.1Â kg of N fertilizer were required to produce 1Â kg of N in food via fertilization for these three grains. Major room exists for improving the efficiency of N flow in Chinese crop systems. Our scenario analyses shows that increases in N use efficiency of fertilizer applied to cropland (RE), decreasing ratios of grain N headed to plant food processing (GUP), and increasing efficiency in animal production (ANU) would result in a marked decrease in N loss from these three crops amounting to one million ton of N, which accounted for 6% of total chemical fertilizer input. Improved N management in Chinese food production has major ramifications for global estimations of N use efficiency and environmental pollution by reactive N, particularly nitrous oxide emissions, a major anthropogenic contributor to global climate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Ma, Wenqi & Li, Jianhui & Ma, Lin & Wang, Fanghao & Sisák, István & Cushman, Gregory & Zhang, Fusuo, 2008. "Nitrogen flow and use efficiency in production and utilization of wheat, rice, and maize in China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 53-63, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:53-63
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308-521X(08)00114-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicola Nosengo, 2003. "Fertilized to death," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6961), pages 894-895, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zongyong Tong & Guoling Quan & Liqiang Wan & Feng He & Xianglin Li, 2019. "The Effect of Fertilizers on Biomass and Biodiversity on a Semi-Arid Grassland of Northern China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-11, May.
    2. Huang, Mingxia & Wang, Jing & Wang, Bin & Liu, De Li & Feng, Puyu & Yu, Qiang & Pan, Xuebiao & Li, Siyi & Jiang, Tengcong, 2022. "Dominant sources of uncertainty in simulating maize adaptation under future climate scenarios in China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    3. Huang, Jikun & Huang, Zhurong & Jia, Xiangping & Hu, Ruifa & Xiang, Cheng, 2015. "Long-term reduction of nitrogen fertilizer use through knowledge training in rice production in China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 105-111.
    4. Duan Ran & Zhanlu Zhang & Yuhan Jing, 2022. "A Study on the Spatial–Temporal Evolution and Driving Factors of Non-Grain Production in China’s Major Grain-Producing Provinces," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(24), pages 1-16, December.
    5. Wang, Mengru & Ma, Lin & Strokal, Maryna & Chu, Yanan & Kroeze, Carolien, 2018. "Exploring nutrient management options to increase nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiencies in food production of China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 58-72.
    6. Dejie Kong & Nana Liu & Chengjie Ren & Huiying Li & Weiyu Wang & Na Li & Guangxin Ren & Yongzhong Feng & Gaihe Yang, 2020. "Effect of Nitrogen Fertilizer on Soil CO 2 Emission Depends on Crop Rotation Strategy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-14, June.
    7. Zhang, Guo & Wang, Xiaoke & Sun, Binfeng & Zhao, Hong & Lu, Fei & Zhang, Lu, 2016. "Status of mineral nitrogen fertilization and net mitigation potential of the state fertilization recommendation in Chinese cropland," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-10.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Jiaxin & Li, Yan & Zheng, Yiming & Tong, Sijie & Zhang, Xuechen & Zhao, Ying & Zheng, Wei & Zhai, Bingnian & Wang, Zhaohui & Zhang, Xucheng & Li, Ziyan & Zamanian, Kazem, 2022. "The spatial and temporal distribution of nitrogen flow in the agricultural system and green development assessment of the Yellow River Basin," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    2. Zhao, Xiao & Gu, Xiaobo & Yang, Zhichao & Li, Yuannong & Zhang, Li & Zhou, Jiaming, 2022. "Effects of soil preparation and mulching practices together with different urea applications on the water and nitrogen use of winter wheat in semi-humid and drought-prone areas," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    3. Jiaqi Hou & Mingxiao Li & Xuhui Mao & Yan Hao & Jie Ding & Dongming Liu & Beidou Xi & Hongliang Liu, 2017. "Response of microbial community of organic-matter-impoverished arable soil to long-term application of soil conditioner derived from dynamic rapid fermentation of food waste," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-15, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:53-63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.