Abstract
Crop nitrogen (N) status is known to affect crop water status and crop water use. To investigate further the N effects on soil water changes and on canopy temperature, three water levels × four N levels were imposed on two growing seasons of maize in west central Nebraska, USA. Soil water changes were measured using a neutron probe, whereas canopy temperature was measured using infrared thermometers on a ground-based mobile platform. At all water levels, soil water losses over month-long intervals were generally greater as N levels increased. Given equal water levels, early afternoon canopy temperatures were usually lower with higher N levels, but no trend or even the opposite trend was occasionally observed. Jointly considering canopy reflectance and soil water depletion shows potential to explain much of the variation in estimated instantaneous water use among plots. However, determining the relative contributions of the canopy and soil factors on a particular day may require season-to-date knowledge of the crop. Further research on assimilating such sensor data for a combined stress coefficient would improve crop modeling and irrigation scheduling when variable water sufficiency and variable N sufficiency are simultaneously significant.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Turner Dorr, Jacob Nickel, Odile Umuhoza, Raïssa Urujeni, Von Fritsche, Jasreman Singh, and Roberto Arellano-Choca for their involvement with data collection; to Gary Mahnken and Merle Still for their supporting roles in field management; to Holland Scientific, Lindsay Corporation, Holzfasters Irrigation, and SureFire Ag Systems for their timely technical support; to Nebraska State Climate Office for their Nebraska Mesonet weather data; and to Debbie Boykin for her statistical consulting. This study is based upon work that was jointly supported by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture under award numbers 2016-68007-25066 and 2017-68007-26584 and under Hatch projects #1009760 and #1015698; the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service under cooperative agreement number 58-6001-7-001; the Nebraska Corn Board under award number 88-R-1617-06; the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute; and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
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Lo, T., Rudnick, D.R., DeJonge, K.C. et al. Differences in soil water changes and canopy temperature under varying water × nitrogen sufficiency for maize. Irrig Sci 38, 519–534 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-020-00683-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-020-00683-2