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Lime-nitrogen application affects nitrification, denitrification, and N2O emission in an acidic tea soil

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Abstract

Lime-N (calcium cyanamide, CaCN2) acts as both fertilizer and pesticide. Lime-N may reduce nitrous oxide (N2O) emission from soil, although its effectiveness and the relative mechanisms are not well understood. The aim of the study was to quantify the effect of lime-N on N2O emission from the acidic soil of tea fields. The study design consisted of two treatments: conventional fertilizer (CF) (application of conventional organo-chemical fertilizer) and lime-N (LN) (application of approximately 53 % of the applied N as lime-N and the remaining as conventional organo-chemical fertilizer). Both treatments had the same amount of N, P2O5, and K2O applied to soil between plant canopies; fertilizer was incorporated into soil. We measured N2O emissions and environmental and microbial parameters of soil between plant canopies and under the canopy of tea plants, including the concentrations of dicyandiamide and cyanamide derived from lime-N. Nitrous oxide emission from soil between plant canopies was lower in the LN treatment than in the CF treatment, and soil ammonium oxidation activity and soil denitrification rate decreased after lime-N application. We applied the acetylene inhibition technique and analyzed isotopomer ratios of N2O; the results of both techniques suggested that denitrification was the major process of N2O production in the soil between plant canopies, despite relatively low water-filled pore space. Cumulative N2O emission over the 366 days of the experiment was 36.0 % lower in the LN treatment than in the CF treatment (P < 0.05). Our results suggest that lime-N application decreases N2O emission by inhibiting both nitrification and denitrification processes in the acidic soil.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Shigeto Sudo, Dr. Syuntaro Hiradate, and Dr. Jun Tabata (National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Japan) for assistance with the gas chromatography and liquid chromatography, and to the staff of the Green Tea Laboratory of Saitama Prefectural Agriculture and Forestry Research Center for assistance with the fieldwork. We thank Dr. Sakae Toyoda (Tokyo Institute of Technology) for providing the standard gas of isotopomer ratios of N2O. This study was financially supported in part by Denki Kagaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, 3-1-3 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8604, Japan

    Akinori Yamamoto, Hiroko Akiyama, Yasuhiro Nakajima & Kazuyuki Yagi

  2. Denki Kagaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, 2-1-1 Nihonbashi-muromachi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-8338, Japan

    Takuji Naokawa

  3. Green Tea Laboratory, Saitama Prefectural Agriculture and Forestry Research Center, 244-2 Kamiyaganuki, Iruma, Saitama, 358-0042, Japan

    Yasuhiro Miyazaki, Yusuke Honda & Yukimasa Sano

Authors
  1. Akinori Yamamoto
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  2. Hiroko Akiyama
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  3. Takuji Naokawa
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  4. Yasuhiro Miyazaki
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  5. Yusuke Honda
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  6. Yukimasa Sano
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  7. Yasuhiro Nakajima
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  8. Kazuyuki Yagi
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Correspondence to Akinori Yamamoto.

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Fig. S1

Description of the experimental design. (PDF 162 kb)

Fig. S2

The relationship between soil temperature at 5 cm depth and N2O emission from soil between the plant canopies (B) and under plant canopies (C) in the (a) organo-chemical fertilizer (CF) and (b) lime-N (LN) treatments. Error bars represent the standard deviation of the measurements from replicate plots (n = 4). (PDF 43 kb)

Supplementary Table 1 (Table S1)

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Yamamoto, A., Akiyama, H., Naokawa, T. et al. Lime-nitrogen application affects nitrification, denitrification, and N2O emission in an acidic tea soil. Biol Fertil Soils 50, 53–62 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-013-0830-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-013-0830-6

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