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Monitoring of drinking water has shown an increase in nitrate-nitrogen (NO-N) concentration in groundwater in some areas of the Heihe River Basin, Northwest China. A combination of careful irrigation and nitrogen (N) management is needed to improve N uptake efficiency and to minimize fertilizer N loss. A 2-year experiment investigated the effects of different irrigation and N application rates on soil NO-N distribution and fertilizer N loss, wheat grain yield and N uptake on recently reclaimed sandy farmland. The experiment followed a completely randomized split-plot design, taking flood irrigation (0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 of the estimated evapotranspiration) as main plot treatment and N-supply as split-plot treatment (with five levels of 0, 79, 140, 221, 300 kg N ha). Fertilizer N loss was calculated according to N balance equation. Our results showed that, under deficit irrigation conditions, N fertilizer application at a rate of 300 kg ha promoted NO-N concentration in 0-200 cm depth soil profiles, and treatments with 221 kg N ha also increased soil NO-N concentrations only in the surface layers. Fertilizer N rates of 70 and 140 kg ha did not increase NO-N concentration in the 0-200 cm soil profile remaining after the spring wheat growing season. The amount of residual NO-N in soil profiles decreased with the amount of irrigation. Compared with N, the increases of fertilizer N loss, in N, N, N and N respectively, were 59.9, 104.6, 143.5 and 210.6 kg ha over 2 years. Under these experimental conditions, a N rate of 221 kg ha obtained the highest values of grain yield (2775 kg ha), above-ground dry matter (5310 kg ha) and plant N uptake (103.8 kg ha) over 2 years. The results clearly showed that the relative high grain yield and irrigation water productivity, and relative low N loss were achieved with application of 221 kg N ha and low irrigation, the recommendation should be for those farmers who use the upper range of the recommended 150-400 kg N ha, that they can save about 45% of their N and 40% of their irrigation water application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]