Designing Corn Management Strategies for High Yield and High Nitrogen Use Efficiency

The challenge of increasing crop productivity and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) has led to a search for novel pathways leading to more sustainable agriculture. Here, we designed a whole‐corn (Zea mays L.) production system based on the local environment, drawing on appropriate crop varieties, sowing dates, densities, and advanced N management on the Loess Plateau in the Northwest of China. A 4 site‐years field experiment was performed to examine this corn system based on grain yield, biomass, N application rate, and NUE. Grain yield with designed crop management varied from 16.1 to 19.1 Mg ha−1 for these 4 site‐years, which attained 98 to 108% of the yield potential (ranging from 15.5–19.3 Mg ha−1). Equally importantly, the optimal N rate ranged from 207 to 222 kg N ha−1 with a high over ratio of 65 to 80 kg grain per kg applied N. Designing an integrated crop management system and N practice is an alternative approach for maximizing the use of solar radiation and periods with favorable temperature, ultimately achieving high yield and high NUE.