Journal
FIELD CROPS RESEARCH
Volume 276, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.fcr.2021.108378
Keywords
Phosphorus placement depth; Root development; Root anatomy; Grain yield; Nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31771713, 31371576]
- Shandong Province Key
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Placing P fertilizer at a depth of 15 cm promotes root growth by reducing metabolic cost and increasing root size, thereby enhancing N and P absorption efficiency and improving grain yield.
Root growth demonstrates a high degree of plasticity in response to spatial variations in the availability of vital nutrients, and P fertilizer placement depth affects the development and distribution of plant roots. Optimizing the spatial matching between soil nutrients and the roots of maize plants in order to improve their N and P uptake and utilization capacity is a potential measure for improving the grain yield from summer maize. The spatial distribution profile of N, P and roots in the soil, as well as the roots' absorption and utilization characteristics with respect to N and P and how these relate to the dry matter accumulation and grain yield formation were evaluated under four different placement depths of 5, 10, 15 and 20 cm (labeled P-5, P-10, P-15, and P-20, respectively). Compared with the P-5 treatment, the P-15 treatment induced a larger root length density, as well as a larger rooting depth. That happened because a higher number of root cortical aerenchyma, combined with a larger cortical cell size, reduces the metabolic cost required to establish them, which drives regulation processes that result in the allocation of more biomass to root proliferation. It also helped plants to maintain a higher level of biomass and N and P accumulation during the later growth period, which in turn increased the N and P assimilation of grain and enhanced the grain yield by 22%, the P recovery efficiency by 74%, the P agronomic efficiency by 150%, and both the partial factor productivity of P and the partial factor productivity of N by 21%. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that placing P fertilizer at a depth of 15 cm promotes root growth by reducing the metabolic cost of having a higher number of mot cortical aerenchyma and a larger cortical cell size, and also that it improves the N and P absorption and utilization of roots and synergistically increases the grain yield and nutrient utilization efficiency of the whole plant.
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