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Article: Effects of nitrogen application rate on soil and plant characteristics in pastures of perennial grass mixtures in the alpine region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China.
- Article from:
- Australian Journal of Soil Research
- Article date:
- December 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 CSIRO Publishing. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Introduction
In the alpine region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, nitrogen (N) is considered to be the most important nutrient limiting dry matter (DM) production of grasses, as most plants are grown on soils which do not supply sufficient N for maximum biomass yields (Che 1982). Poor decomposition activities of microorganisms at low temperatures (Bliss 1971; Hozmann and Haselwandter 1988; Theodose and Bowman 1997; Bowman and Bilbrough 2001; Shen et al. 2002), in combination with low total soil N (Le and Zuo 1982; Bao and Zhao 1989), mean that soluble soil N is usually deficient (Le and Bao 1980; Che 1995).
Nitrogen application can improve herbage DM ...