Fate of Soil Residual Fertilizer-15N as Affected by Different Drip Irrigation Regimes

Soil residual N is a potential factor threatening the environment, but it is also an N fertilizer resource. Few studies have evaluated the fate of soil residual N under agronomic practice. The objective of this study was to investigate the distribution of residual N and its possible influencing factors with different irrigation regimes. Under three N residual situations created by the previous season using the 15N labeled urea, we employed lettuce as the plant material and three lower limits of drip irrigation including 75% (DR1), 65% (DR2), and 55% (DR3) accounting for the field water capacity as experimental treatments. A furrow irrigation treatment (FI) with the same irrigation regime as DR2 was used as control. Results showed that 2.1–4.8% of the residual 15N from the previous season was absorbed by the succeeding lettuce, 78.0–84.4% was still remained in the 0–80 cm soil, and 10.9–20.0% was unaccounted for. After harvest of succeeding lettuces, the soil residual 15N mainly existed in the mineral form. Moreover, the lettuce reuse efficiency for15N was positively correlated with the total residual 15N amount (p < 0.01) and the mineral 15N amount (p < 0.01). The overall results indicated that an appropriate irrigation regime (DR2) was conducive to promoting absorption of residual N by succeeding crop.