Soil acidification is a major problem in soils of intensive Chinese agricultural systems. We used two nationwide surveys, paired comparisons in numerous individual sites, and several long-term monitoring-field data sets to evaluate changes in soil acidity. Soil pH declined significantly (P < 0.001) from the 1980s to the 2000s in the major Chinese crop-production areas. Processes related to nitrogen cycling released 20 to 221 kilomoles of hydrogen ion (H+) per hectare per year, and base cations uptake contributed a further 15 to 20 kilomoles of H+ per hectare per year to soil acidification in four widespread cropping systems. In comparison, acid deposition (0.4 to 2.0 kilomoles of H+ per hectare per year) made a small contribution to the acidification of agricultural soils across China.

The success of modern maize breeding has been demonstrated by remarkable increases in productivity over the last four decades. However, the underlying genetic changes correlated with these gains remain largely unknown. We report here the sequencing of 278 temperate maize inbred lines from different stages of breeding history, including deep resequencing of 4 lines with known pedigree information. The results show that modern breeding has introduced highly dynamic genetic changes into the maize genome. Artificial selection has affected thousands of targets, including genes and non-genic regions, leading to a reduction in nucleotide diversity and an increase in the proportion of rare alleles. Genetic changes during breeding happen rapidly, with extensive variation (SNPs, indels and copy-number variants (CNVs)) occurring, even within identity-by-descent regions. Our genome-wide assessment of genetic changes during modern maize breeding provides new strategies as well as practical targets for future crop breeding and biotechnology.

Nitrous oxide (N O) is a greenhouse gas that also plays the primary role in stratospheric ozone depletion. The use of nitrogen fertilizers is known as the major reason for atmospheric N O increase. Empirical bottom-up models therefore estimate agricultural N O inventories using N loading as the sole predictor, disregarding the regional heterogeneities in soil inherent response to external N loading. Several environmental factors have been found to influence the response in soil N O emission to N fertilization, but their interdependence and relative importance have not been addressed properly. Here, we show that soil pH is the chief factor explaining regional disparities in N O emission, using a global meta-analysis of 1,104 field measurements. The emission factor (EF) of N O increases significantly (p < .001) with soil pH decrease. The default EF value of 1.0%, according to IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for agricultural soils, occurs at soil pH 6.76. Moreover, changes in EF with N fertilization (i.e. ΔEF) is also negatively correlated (p < .001) with soil pH. This indicates that N O emission in acidic soils is more sensitive to changing N fertilization than that in alkaline soils. Incorporating our findings into bottom-up models has significant consequences for regional and global N O emission inventories and reconciling them with those from top-down models. Moreover, our results allow region-specific development of tailor-made N O mitigation measures in agriculture.

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It is generally believed that grain yield per unit area of modern maize hybrids is related to their adaptability to high plant population density. In this study, the effects of two different plant densities (52,500 and 90,000 plants/hm 2 ) on 12 traits associated with yield were evaluated using a set of 231 F 2:3 families derived from two elite inbred lines, Zheng58 and Chang7-2. Evaluation of the phenotypes expressed under the two plant density conditions showed that high plant density condition could decrease the value of 10 measured yield component traits, while the final grain yield per hectare and the rate of kernel production were increased. Twenty-seven quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for 10 traits were detected in both high and low plant density conditions; among them, some QTLs were shown to locate in five clusters. Thirty QTLs were only detected under high plant density. These results suggest that some of the yield component traits perhaps were controlled by a common set of genes, and that kernel number per row, ear length, row number per ear, cob diameter, cob weight, and ear diameter may be influenced by additional genetic mechanisms when grown under high plant density. The QTLs identified in this study provide useful information for markerassisted selection of varieties targeting increased plant density.