Incorporation of nitrogen from urea fertilizer into soil organic matter in rice paddy and cassava upland fields in Indonesia

Abstract

Incorporation of newly-immobilized N into major soil organic matter fractions during a cropping period under paddy and upland cropping systems in the tropics was investigated in Jawa paddy fields with and without fish cultivation and a Sumatra cassava field in Indonesia. ¹⁵N-labelled urea (¹⁵N urea) was applied as basal fertilizer, and the soil samples were collected after harvest. The percentage of distribution of the residual N in soil from ¹⁵N urea into the humic acids, fulvic acid fraction, and humin were 13.1–13.9, 19.0–20.5, and 53.4–54.3%, respectively, for the Jawa paddy soils, and 14.9, 27.4, and 52.4%, respectively, for the Sumatra cassava soil. These values were comparable to the reported ones for other climatic zones. The percentage of distribution of ¹⁵N urea-derived N into humic acids was larger than that of total N into the same fraction in all the soils. The distribution into the fulvic acid fraction was also larger for ¹⁵N urea-derived N than for total N in the Jawa soils. Humic and non-humic substances in the fulvic acid fraction were separated using insoluble polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) into the adsorbed and non-adsorbed fractions, respectively. Less than 5% of the ¹⁵N urea-derived N in fulvic acid fraction was detected in the PVP-adsorbed fraction (generic fulvic acids). The proportion of non-hydrolyzable N remained after boiling with 6 M HCl in the ¹⁵N urea-derived N was 9.4–13.5%, 17.3–26.7%, and 8.4–16.6% for the humic acids, generic fulvic acids, and humin, respectively. The significantly low resistance to acid hydrolysis suggested that the ¹⁵N urea-derived N was less stable than the total N in soil regardless of the fractions of humus.