Response of black bean, lentil and chick pea to starter nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers

Abstract

Nitrogen (N) is an important plant nutrient, and it is the primary constituent of plant nucleotides and proteins, but it is usually the most limiting nutrient in the soil. Improving N use efficiency in agricultural crops has become an important goal in sustainable agriculture. Accordingly, understanding enzymes involved in N reactions is increasingly critical as they are important in controlling N in the environment. The objective of this study is to determine N transformation after varying rates of urea fertilizer is applied to a field; and how N transformation may differ between diverse Brassica napus L. (canola) lines. Two diverse B. napus parent lines and two hybrid lines were grown on Dark Brown Chernozemic soil in Saskatchewan, Canada. Root-associated soils were collected from each line at bolting and flowering, and analyzed for urease and ammonium oxidation enzymes, as well, soil nitrate and ammonium content was de termined. Both urease and ammonium oxidation enzyme results showed significant differences between B. napus growth stages (bolting and flowering), and N fertilizer rate after mixed effect models were used to analyze the results. We predict that both nitrate-N and ammonium-N will have significant differences between the canola lines and N rate application. Mixed effect analyses will be used to analyze soil nitrate-N and ammonium-N, with regards to canola line differences, and growth stage differences, and N fertilizer rate differences. By characterizing soil N transformations, this research will advance our knowledge in improving N availability for B. napus lines.