Effects of fertilization management under WSPI on soil nitrogen distribution and nitrogen absorption in apple orchard in loess plateau

Abstract

Water storage pit irrigation (WSPI) has been proven effective in improving the water use efficiency of fruit trees in Loess Plateau, but so far there are still no matching efficient fertilization management methods. A two-year experiment was conducted to explore the management strategy of fertilization under the consideration of apple production and environmental sustainability. N isotope tracer technique was used to study the distribution of labelled nitrogen in soil, leaf, root and fruit. Moreover, the yield in different fertilizer managements were observed to evaluate the apple production. The results showed that increasing the amount of fertilizer could increase the accumulation of fertilizer nitrogen in soil, but also increased the risk of nitrogen leaching. Under the same amount of fertilizer, split fertilization can effectively increase of fertilizer nitrogen in soil by a mean of 4.7 times. Further, N300 application with split fertilization effectively increased apple yield. The yield of N300II treatment was higher than other treatment by maximum 68.5%. In addition, the root system mainly absorbed the fertilizer nitrogen applied in the current year, and the fruit mainly absorbed the fertilizer nitrogen applied in the previous year, but there was no significant difference in the leaves.