Chinese Milk Vetch as Green Manure Mitigates Nitrous Oxide Emission from Monocropped Rice System in South China

PLoS One. 2016 Dec 13;11(12):e0168134. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168134. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Monocropped rice system is an important intensive cropping system for food security in China. Green manure (GM) as an alternative to fertilizer N (FN) is useful for improving soil quality. However, few studies have examined the effect of Chinese milk vetch (CMV) as GM on nitrous oxide (N2O) emission from monocropped rice field in south China. Therefore, a pot-culture experiment with four treatments (control, no FN and CMV; CMV as GM alone, M; fertilizer N alone, FN; integrating fertilizer N with CMV, NM) was performed to investigate the effect of incorporating CMV as GM on N2O emission using a closed chamber-gas chromatography (GC) technique during the rice growing periods. Under the same N rate, incorporating CMV as GM (the treatments of M and NM) mitigated N2O emission during the growing periods of rice plant, reduced the NO3- content and activities of nitrate and nitrite reductase as well as the population of nitrifying bacteria in top soil at maturity stage of rice plant versus FN pots. The global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) of N2O from monocropped rice field was ranked as M<NM<FN. However, the treatment of NM increased rice grain yield and soil NH4+ content, which were dramatically decreased in the M pots, over the treatment of FN. Hence, it can be concluded that integrating FN with CMV as GM is a feasible tactic for food security and N2O mitigation in the monocropped rice based system.

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Crop Production / methods*
  • Fabaceae / growth & development*
  • Fabaceae / metabolism
  • Greenhouse Effect / prevention & control*
  • Nitrogen Cycle*
  • Nitrous Oxide / metabolism*
  • Oryza / growth & development*
  • Oryza / metabolism
  • Soil / chemistry

Substances

  • Soil
  • Nitrous Oxide

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Special Fund for Agro-Scientific Research in the Public Interest (Project no., 201103005, 201303106, 201503123) and the National Science Foundation (41471407). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.