Abstract
Paddy accounts for a significant share of fertilizer consumption among agricultural crops. Urea is the widely used nitrogenous fertilizer for paddy. The intensive use of Nitrogen (N) fertilizer has increased nitrogen concentration into agricultural soil–plant systems and also has increased nitrogen losses in to the environment. Very few studies are found in the literature which estimate the reaction rate constants in real field condition. The reaction rate constants for urea transformation processes such as urea hydrolysis, ammonia volatilization, nitrification and denitrification were estimated from two experimental methods namely Compressed Air Supply (CAS) method and Open Static Chamber method (OSC) with no crop in the field. The OSC method is easy and simple method. The CAS method is relatively a more sophisticated method for estimation of volatilized ammonia. The reaction rate constants were estimated by both the methods and the results showed no significant variations. Since OSC method is very simple in construction and easy to implement in the field, OSC method was adopted for field evaluation of nitrogen balance study in paddy fields. Continuous Flooded Irrigation (CFI) and Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) are the two common methods of growing paddy. Modelling of nitrogen transformation process was done for both AWD and CFI methods. Estimation of reaction rate constants of urea was done by inverse modelling using non-linear optimization. The experimental and analytical methods adopted by us could be used in modelling urea transport in soils.
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Acknowledgements
The work was carried out under the project namely “Fertigation Scheduling for Paddy by Simulation Modelling” funded by Indian Council of Agricultural Research of Natural Resources Management Division, New Delhi. I would like to thank “Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Agricultural Engineering College & Research Institute, Kumulur, Trichy” for providing the facilities to conduct the research works.
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Vanitha, S., Ravikumar, V. & Sherene Jenita Rajammal, T. Estimation of urea reaction rate constants in paddy fields. Paddy Water Environ 21, 433–446 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10333-023-00938-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10333-023-00938-6