Effect of Late-Season Nitrogen Fertilization on Grain Yield and on Flour Rheological Quality and Stability in Common Wheat, Under Different Production Situations

Abstract

The increasing demand for a high and homogeneous technological quality of common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) points out the necessity of improving wheat with by a higher protein (GPC) and gluten content, strength of dough (W) and dough stability. Among the current crop practices, late-season nitrogen (N) fertilization, from heading to flowering, is generally considered the practice that has the most effects on the storage proteins and technological quality of the grain. In order to explore the influence late-season N application can have on the dough properties and on the formation of homogeneous lots in more detail, a research was set up between 2007 and 2013, over 6 growing seasons at different sites in North West Italy using the Bologna cultivar in each of the trials. Three different late-season N fertilization strategies were compared: T1, control without a late distribution of N; T2, foliar N fertilization at flowering; T3, top-dress granular soil fertilization at the beginning of heading. A randomized complete block experimental design with four replicates was adopted. The grain yield, GPC, W and P/L indexes were analyzed. Moreover, the rheological and enzymatic properties of the samples were studied using a Mixolab ® analyser (Chòpin Technologies, Paris, France).Grain yield was found to be unaffected by the fertilization treatments, while the late N application (T2, T3) significantly increased GPC. Only the granular N fertilization (T3) increased the W index compared to T1, while the P/L index was not affected by any of the fertilization strategies. Furthermore, the T3 strategy was always more effective in reducing the variability of the W index than the T2 and the T1 strategies. Water absorption and dough development time were higher in T3, than in T1, while intermediate results were reached for T2. The effect of late-season N fertilization was also significant on the starch behaviour of the dough, as an increase in starch gelatinization and retrogradation was observed. In short, the top-dress granular N fertilizer applied at the beginning of heading (T3) led to a more constant increase in GPC and flour rheological quality than the foliar application. Moreover, the adoption of this fertilization strategy resulted in a reduction in qualitative variability under different environmental and soil conditions.

Yield and quality of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grain in relation to nitrogen fertilization

“…Such an increase was stable through the years of experiment and did not depend on the variations of weather conditions. These data are consistent with a number of studies on the special role of foliar nitrogen treatments for protein accumulation in grain (Gholami et al, 2011;Litke et al, 2018;Wagan et al, 2017;Walsh et al, 2018), the importance of the last treatment (Gholami et al, 2011;Mandic et al, 2015) and the treatment from heading to flowering (Blandino et al, 2016) in increasing grain protein content, and the high efficiency of nitrogen feeding in reducing plant stress caused by hot weather (Mandic et al, 2015). Bhatta et al (2017) found that the nitrogen rate at the flag leaf stage increased grain protein content by 1.5-8.1%.…”

Durum Wheat Grain Yield and Quality under Low and High Nitrogen Conditions: Insights into Natural Variation in Low- and High-Yielding Genotypes

“…Among the environmental factors that affect strongly crop productivity and nutritional quality of cereal crops, fertilizers management is an important factor to obtain high yield and high quality harvests [7]. Nitrogen is one of the major nutritional elements required for adequate plant growth; hence, fertilization with N increases grain yields and improves end use quality [8][9][10]. As a consequence, N fertilizers application has been dramatically increased [11].…”

Mineral Profile of the Winter Wheat Grain: Effects of Soil Tillage Systems and Nitrogen Fertilization

“…The optimal application of fertilizers is an important factor for obtaining high yield and high quality products. Among the elements of mineral nutrition, nitrogen has the most important role in forming the yield (Litke et al, 2018), quality and utilizable value of the wheat grain (Blandino et al, 2016). Numerous studies have shown that the application of nitrogen fertilizer can promote the accumulation of certain microelements in the wheat grain, such as Fe and Zn (Kutman et al, 2011;Singh et al, 2018).…”