Loss of nitrogen gas from water-logged soils

The investigation shows that when water-logged soils were treated with nitrogenous manures and fertilizers like oil cake, water hyacinth, ammonium sulphate and sodium nitrate, a large volume of nitrogen evolved as gas. This loss began 7–12 days after application of different treatments and was quicker from inorganic fertilizers than from organic manures. Besides loss as gas, a large amount of nitrogen was also lost in the drainage. The results suggest that if fertilizers like ammonium sulphate and sodium nitrate are applied to rice-fields by top dressing during the active vegetative growth of the crop, the loss nitrogen as gas will probably be greatly minimized.