MANAGEMENT OF NITROGEN FERTILIZATION OF FRESH VEGETABLE CROPS AT FIELD SCALE IN THE WALLOON REGION OF BELGIUM

Vegetable crops frequently receive high inputs of organic or mineral N fertilizer leading to quality losses and water pollution.
A good management of N fertilization of these crops can both ensure their financial success and appreciably reduce the cause of these problems.
Increasing N rates trials have been conducted in loam soil aiming to improve N efficiency of four crops (carrot, escarole, Welsh onion and curled-leaved endive). A provisional balance sheet method at field scale (Azobil software) has been used to give N recommendations and the N-needs fixed a priori for the four crops have been refined: 220 kg N ha^-1 for carrots, 110 kg N ha^-1 for escarole and curled-leaved endive and 180 kg N ha^-1 for Welsh onion.
Considering these N-needs and the difficulty to assess the net mineralization, Azobil frequently gave N recommendations close to optimal N rates.
The phase of intense N crop uptake was from 60 to 80, 35 to 40, 25 to 35 and 30 to 40 days after sowing or transplanting for carrot, Welsh onion, escarole and curled-leaved endive respectively.
This information, combined with N status monitoring of plants could be used to develop new strategies based on split N applications.

XXVIII International Horticultural Congress on Science and Horticulture for People (IHC2010): International Symposium on Environmental, Edaphic, and Genetic Factors Affecting Plants, Seeds and Turfgrass

M. Abras, J.P. Goffart, S. Renard, J.P. Destain

nitrogen, vegetables, N-recommendation systems, N-needs, N uptake kinetics

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2012.938.30