Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a critical role in rice production, but its feedback to the fate of fertilizer nitrogen (N) is not clear. In this study, a pot experiment was conducted to investigate the responses of rice yield and the fate of fertilizer N to different SOC levels using <sup>15</sup>N-labelled urea. The results showed that rice biomass, yield and the total N uptake increased significantly with increasing SOC content. Both rice N uptake from soil and urea increased significantly with increasing SOC content. The recovery rate and residual rate of fertilizer N improved significantly with increasing SOC content, leading to a reduced rate of not-specified fertilizer N. Therefore, it was concluded that high SOC could not only improve rice yield and fertilizer N recovery, but also could increase the retention of fertilizer N and decrease the not-specified N in the paddy soil.
Rice Yield and the Fate of Fertilizer Nitrogen as Affected by Addition of Earthworm Casts Collected from Oilseed Rape Fields: A Pot Experiment
