Reducing environmental risk of nitrogen by popularizing mechanically dense transplanting for rice production in China

The high nitrogen (N) application rates typically used in Chinese cropping systems have led to diminishing returns for yields and have also imposed substantial environmental costs. Here, we estimate that the annual N loss from rice production in China reached approximately 2.6×109 kg from 2011 to 2015, and we demonstrate that adoption of the mechanically dense transplanting technique by producers is an effective method to reduce N loss from rice cropping systems without suffering a yield penalty.