Nitrogen use scenario in India

Nitrogen is one of the major plant nutrients without which the agricultural production is not possible. Nitrogen use in Indian agriculture was nearly 55000 tons in 1950-1951 that increased to 11.31 million tons in 2001 -2002. The total food production of the country has also experienced the similar increase from 50.83 to 222 million tons in the respective years. Interestingly the N fertilizer consumption of India remained almost constant during the last six years indicating the possibility of reducing N consumption. The highest N consumption is in North zone owing to the introduction of rice-wheat cropping system followed by West, South and East. The N use efficiency has been reported to be varying between 30% to 50% depending on the crops and the management. But in most of the cases, N use efficiency has been calculated based on the total N removed by the crops (above ground part only) ignoring the N content left in the roots. It has been observed in controlled experiments that the total N uptake by roots varied from 18% to 44% of the total N removed by the above ground parts, i.e. grain and straw. If the root N is also accounted, the N use efficiency will be higher than reported. The management of other organic sources has to be improved so as to increase the fertilizer use efficiency as well as to check the direct release of N in the atmosphere. In this review all these issues will be dealt.