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ISHS Acta Horticulturae 700: International Symposium Towards Ecologically Sound Fertilisation Strategies for Field Vegetable Production

CARBON AND NITROGEN BALANCE OF A LONG-TERM EXPERIMENT WITH VEGETABLE CROPS

Author:   J. Rühlmann
Keywords:   carbon sequestration, fertilisation strategy, nitrogen losses, plant soil system
Abstract:
A long-term experiment on three different soils with a vegetable crop rotation was used to calculate the carbon and nitrogen balances of twelve treatments characterised by different fertilisation strategies within a 30 years period. The aim of the investigations was to show which fertilisation strategy led 1st) to a maximum carbon gain for the plant soil system and additionally 2nd) to a minimum level of nitrogen losses from this system. Other aspects like the quality of the produced vegetable were excluded from these investigations. Under our specific experimental conditions, it was estimated that to get the maximum carbon gain of the plant soil system 1st) the produced plant matter should reach the site specific maximum and that 2nd) the carbon input by manures should be decreased to a minimum. If we consider additionally aspects of minimisation of nitrogen losses from the system, the mineral N fertilisation could be increased to a level that ensures the site specific maximum of the produced plant matter on the one hand. On the other hand, if we want to guarantee mean N losses of maximum 50 kg N ha-1 year-1 in treatments applied exclusively with manures, the total annual N input by organic materials should not exceed 100-150 kg N ha-1.

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