Nitrogen fertiliser applied to crops lingers in the soil and leaks out as nitrate for decades towards groundwater. "Much longer than previously thought", scientists at the Université Pierre et Marie Currie in Paris (France) and at the University of Calgary say in a
study published this week in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Thirty years after synthetic nitrogen (N) fertiliser had been applied to crops, about 15 per cent of the fertiliser N still remained in soil organic matter, the scientists found. After three decades, approximately 10 per cent of the fertiliser N had seeped through the soil towards the groundwater and will continue to leak in low amounts for at least another 50 years.
According to the researchers, this long-term experiment is carried out on a soil type characterised as a hypercalcareous rendosol overlying a cryoturbated chalky substrate, which is typical of this intensive agricultural region in the north of France.
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Source: University of Calgary