RESEARCH ARTICLE


Impact of Nitrogen Fertilization on Soil and Aquifers in the Humid Pampa, Argentina



A. Abril*, L. Roca
Microbiología Agrícola, Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina


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Creative Commons License
© 2008 Abril and Roca

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Microbiología Agrícola, Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina; E-mail: aabril@agro.uncor.edu


Abstract

There is great concern worldwide about air and water pollution arising from N-fertilizer. Considering the expansion of agriculture and fertilization practices in Argentina, the objective of this study was to determine the effect of Nfertilizers on soil N dynamics and then relationship with nitrate concentration in aquifers. Soil samples were taken during a maize crop cycle in two agricultural farms under different fertilization treatments: UAN (urea, ammonium nitrate and ammonium tiosulfate, 110 kg N ha-1); and UREA (urea, 60 kg N ha-1). UAN and UREA treatment produced an increase in soil nitrate content (from 6 to 550 and 60 mg N kg-1 respectively) and the 71% of aquifers sampled exceeded 45 mg l-1. Our results indicate that uan application produced great N losses and did not increase soil residual N, suggesting that the high amount of nitrates in aquifers would arise from the soil N losses.

Keywords: Nitrate dynamics, microbial processes, water pollution.