A - Papers appearing in refereed journals
Lui, Y., Neal, A. L., Zhang, X., Cui, E., Gao, F., Fan, X., Hu, C. and Li, Z. 2019. Increasing livestock wastewater application in alternate-furrow irrigation reduces nitrification gene abundance but not nitrification rate in rhizosphere. Biology And Fertility Of Soils. pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-019-01361-y
Authors | Lui, Y., Neal, A. L., Zhang, X., Cui, E., Gao, F., Fan, X., Hu, C. and Li, Z. |
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Abstract | Wastewater generated during livestock production is rich in nitrogen, but careless discharge could result in greenhouse gas emission, eutrophication or other problems. Using wastewater to irrigate cropland not only recovers nutrients but also partly relieves the pressure on water resources. In water-scarce regions, alternate-furrow irrigation (AFI) - alternately wetting half of the plant roots - was proven to be an effective water-saving approach without compromising yield. However, the extent to which AFI with wastewater affects nitrogen cycling genes remains poorly studied. We aimed to investigate changes in bacterial and fungal community structure, as well as relative abundance of nitrogen cycle-associated genes in soil receiving AFI with swine wastewater. We examined three irrigation rates, irrigating pepper plants with 50%, 65% and 80% of the amount of water required under conventional furrow irrigation to prevent the crop suffering water stress. Each treatment had a groundwater-irrigation control. We measured edaphic factors, microbial community structure and gene abundance in rhizosphere and bulk soils. The results showed that with decreasing irrigation rate, nifH, bacterial and archeal amoA and nosZ gene abundance increased and nirK and nirS gene abundance decreased in the rhizosphere, implying that reducing wastewater use by AFI can improve nitrogen use efficiency and reduce N2O emission via denitrification, but may increase the N2O emission via nitrification. Our findings provide an useful reference to improve water and nitrogen use efficiencies and environmental protection in agriculture in the meantime. |
Keywords | Livestock wastewater; Alternate-furrow irrigation; Irrigation amount; Nitrogen transformation genes; Water quality |
Year of Publication | 2019 |
Journal | Biology And Fertility Of Soils |
Journal citation | pp. 1-17 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-019-01361-y |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Funder | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council |
Natural Environment Research Council | |
Funder project or code | S2N - Soil to Nutrition - Work package 1 (WP1) - Optimising nutrient flows and pools in the soil-plant-biota system |
ASSIST - Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems | |
Publisher's version | |
Accepted author manuscript | |
Output status | E-publication ahead of print |
Publication dates | |
Online | 18 Apr 2019 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 02 Apr 2019 |
Copyright license | CC BY |
Publisher | Springer |
ISSN | 0178-2762 |
Permalink - https://repository.rothamsted.ac.uk/item/84v5q/increasing-livestock-wastewater-application-in-alternate-furrow-irrigation-reduces-nitrification-gene-abundance-but-not-nitrification-rate-in-rhizosphere