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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Climate-Smart Food Systems
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1460994

Nitrification and urease inhibitors reduce gaseous N losses and improve nitrogen use efficiency in wheat exposed to elevated CO2 and temperature

Provisionally accepted
Bidisha Chakrabarti Bidisha Chakrabarti 1Arti Bhatia Arti Bhatia 1,2*Shikha Sharma Shikha Sharma 1Ritu Tomer Ritu Tomer 1Abhilasha Sharma Abhilasha Sharma 1Ankita Paul Ankita Paul 1Vinod Kumar Vinod Kumar 1Mark Sutton Mark Sutton 3
  • 1 Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR), New Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi, India
  • 2 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, India
  • 3 UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Climate change significantly impacts food production by influencing crop growth and soil processes. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures may affect reactive nitrogen losses from cultivated soils. This study aimed to quantify the effects of nitrification and urease inhibitors on reactive nitrogen losses from wheat soils in the context of elevated CO2 and temperature interactions. An experiment was conducted in open top chambers for two consecutive years to quantify the effect of nitrification and urease inhibitors on ammonia (NH3), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in wheat under elevated carbon dioxide (EC), elevated temperature (ET) and their interaction (ECT). The carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration ranged from 552-568 ppm in the EC treatment, while the average temperature was 2.1C to 2.5C higher in ET treatment than ambient (AMB). The N2O-N emission increased under ECT than ambient. Use of neem oil coated urea (NOCU) reduced the N2O-N emission by 10.3%, whereas, Limus coated urea reduced N2O-N emission by 14% as compared to prilled urea treatment under ECT. NH3-N emission from wheat soil also increased under ECT treatment as compared to AMB. Application of N through Limus, reduced NH3-N emission from wheat by 35.7% -36.8% when compared with NH3-N emission from prilled urea ECT condition. Elevated temperature reduced grain weight by 7.6%. The grain N content reduced by 10.9% with prilled urea under ECT. The application of NOCU and Limus increased grain N by 6% and 9%, respectively, as compared to urea under ECT interaction. The application of nitrification and urease inhibitors may reduce reactive nitrogen losses and enhance nitrogen use efficiency under future climatic conditions.

    Keywords: Nitrification inhibitor, urease inhibitor, Nitrous Oxide, Ammonia, N use efficiency, Future climate

    Received: 07 Jul 2024; Accepted: 28 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chakrabarti, Bhatia, Sharma, Tomer, Sharma, Paul, Kumar and Sutton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Arti Bhatia, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, India

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