Can Enhanced Efficiency N Fertilizers Mitigate N2O Emissions without Compromising Crop Yield?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Optimizing N fertilizer management is imperative to minimize nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from croplands and to lower the environmental footprint of canola. This field study evaluated the effects of enhanced efficiency N fertilizers (EENF; fertilizers containing urease inhibitors and/or nitrification inhibitors) when applied in the fall vs. in the spring at the soil-test recommended rate vs. a reduced rate (70% of soil-test rate) on agronomic and environmental performances and compared to the conventional practice in dryland canola (Brassica napus L.) over 2 years in Saskatoon. Also, a soil incubation study investigated the N2O reduction potentials from urea-treated soils with and without Nitrapyrin (nitrification inhibitor) throughout a freeze-thaw event. Results from the field study showed the marginal differences in yield, seed N, and crop nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) between conventional urea and EENFs. Under the prolonged drought in 2021, crop NUE was improved with N application in the fall or at a reduced rate although crop yield remained low across N treatments. The modification of N source, rate, and timing did not influence N2O emissions, indeed, N2O emissions was primarily controlled by soil moisture conditions. Dry conditions during the growing season in 2020 and 2021 contributed to low emissions. The different soil moisture conditions and thaw intensity during the spring thaw periods affected N2O production where the fall N application produced higher cumulative emissions during the spring thaw and annually compared to the spring N application in Year 1, but the opposite results were observed in Year 2. Yield-scaled N2O emissions were exceedingly high across N treatments. In 2020 and 2021, the provincial average yield did not provide positive economic returns on EENF investments. Results from the incubation study demonstrated that soil moisture, temperature, and N levels had a greater impact on regulating N2O production than Nitrapyrin. Fertilized soils regardless of N formulations produced higher N2O than non-fertilized soils. High soil moisture and temperature conditions favoured denitrification and magnified the intensity of emissions. Based on these results, yield gains and N2O mitigation may not always be achieved by applying EENFs to soils in dry years.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".