Establishing long-term nitrogen response of global cereals to assess sustainable fertilizer rates: [Author Correction]

Hans J.M. van Grinsven*, Peter Ebanyat, Margaret Glendining, Baojing Gu, Renske Hijbeek, Shu Kee Lam, Luis Lassaletta, Nathaniel D. Mueller, Felipe S. Pacheco, Miguel Quemada, Tom W. Bruulsema, Brian H. Jacobsen, Hein F.M. ten Berge

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

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Abstract

Insight into the response of cereal yields to nitrogen fertilizer is fundamental to improving nutrient management and policies to sustain economic crop benefits and food sufficiency with minimum nitrogen pollution. Here we propose a new method to assess long-term (LT) regional sustainable nitrogen inputs. The core is a novel scaled response function between normalized yield and total net nitrogen input. The function was derived from 25 LT field trials for wheat, maize and barley in Europe, Asia and North America and is fitted by a second-order polynomial (R2 = 0.82). Using response functions derived from common short-term field trials, with soil nitrogen not in steady state, gives the risks of soil nitrogen depletion or nitrogen pollution. The scaled LT curve implies that the total nitrogen input required to attain the maximum yield is independent of this maximum yield as postulated by Mitscherlich in 1924. This unique curve was incorporated into a simple economic model with valuation of externalities of nitrogen surplus as a function of regional per-capita gross domestic product. The resulting LT sustainable nitrogen inputs range from 150 to 200 kgN ha−1 and this interval narrows with increasing yield potential and decreasing gross domestic product. The adoption of LT response curves and external costs in cereals may have important implications for policies and application ceilings for nitrogen use in regional and global agriculture and ultimately the global distribution of cereal production.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftNature Food
Vol/bind3
Sider (fra-til)122–132
Antal sider14
ISSN2662-1355
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2022

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work is part of the International Nitrogen Management System project (INMS, http://www.inms.international/) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). H.F.M.t.B. and R.H. acknowledge the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements (https://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors), and L.L. acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Science Innovation and Universities (AgroSceNA-UP PID2019-107972RB-I00 project), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the European Commission ERDF Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2016-20269) and Programa Propio of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. We thank M. van Ittersum and R. Schils for comments and the use of Global Yield Gap Atlas data (http://www.yieldgap.org/web/guest/home).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

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