Nitrogen fertilization strategies for improved Mediterranean rainfed wheat and barley performance and water and nitrogen use efficiency

Adequate fertilization strategies are paramount to fulfill increasing demands for food, feed and fiber while reducing environmental impacts. However, their optimization under Mediterranean no-till systems has received little attention. The objective of this work was to assess winter cereal yield and water and N use efficiencies in a rainfed semiarid Mediterranean climate under (i) a range of pre-plant fertilizers [control without N fertilizer (0 N), and the following at 75 kg N ha)by reducing the number of spikes m-2 produced, pointing out that INC resulted in water deficit during the early reproductive period of the crop. While INC is often consider a best management practice to reduce NH3 volatilization losses from broadcast fertilizer applications, the results demonstrate that in rainfed Mediterranean agroecosystems water is more limiting than the N that could be potentially lost by volatilization.Ramón y Cajal fellow (RYC-2018-024536-I) co-funded by AEI-MICIU and Euro-pean Social Fund. This research was supported by the AGL2010-22050- C03-01, AGL2013-49062-C4-1-R and AGL2017-84529-C3-3-R grants of the Spanish National Plan of Researc