Field Crop 2025, Vol.8, No.3, 113-125 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/fc 113 Review and Progress Open Access Impact of Drip Irrigation and Fertigation on Water and Nutrient Use Efficiency in Maize Fields Jinhua Cheng, Shanjun Zhu, Wei Wang Institute of Life Sciences, Jiyang College of Zhejiang A&F University, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China Corresponding email: wei.wang@jicat.org Field Crop, 2025, Vol.8, No.3 doi: 10.5376/fc.2025.08.0012 Received: 11 Mar., 2025 Accepted: 22 Apr., 2025 Published: 14 May, 2025 Copyright © 2025 Cheng et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Cheng J.H., Zhu S.J., and Wang W., 2025, Impact of drip irrigation and fertigation on water and nutrient use efficiency in maize fields, Field Crop, 8(3): 113-125 (doi: 10.5376/fc.2025.08.0012) Abstract Drip irrigation and integrated water and fertilizer technology, as an advanced water-saving and efficient agricultural measure, have shown significant effects in increasing production, saving water, improving quality and enhancing efficiency in corn production. Based on a review of the research progress at home and abroad in the past five years, this study systematically analyzed the influence mechanisms of drip irrigation and water and fertilizer integration on water use efficiency (WUE) and nutrient use efficiency (NUE) in maize fields. The results show that drip irrigation can optimize the distribution of soil moisture, reduce the loss of ineffective moisture, and improve the water consumption efficiency of corn. Integrated water and fertilizer management promotes the absorption and utilization of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium by corn through simultaneous water and fertilizer supply, enhancing photosynthesis and dry matter accumulation. Compared with traditional irrigation and fertilization methods, drip irrigation with integrated water and fertilizer can significantly increase corn yield (generally by 5% to 20%) and quality (such as grain protein content), improve water use efficiency by 20% to 50%, and increase nutrient use efficiency by more than 30%. In addition, this technology can effectively save 30% to 40% of irrigation water, reduce nutrient loss and greenhouse gas emissions, and has obvious ecological and environmental benefits. At the end of this article, combined with the practical case of water and fertilizer integration of corn drip irrigation in the North China Plain, the application effect and limitations were evaluated, and suggestions for promotion and application were put forward. Research suggests that further optimizing the irrigation and fertilization system, reducing costs and strengthening intelligent management are important directions for improving the water and fertilizer utilization efficiency of corn and achieving sustainable agricultural development. Keywords Corn; Drip irrigation; Integrated water and fertilizer management; Water use efficiency; Nutrient utilization efficiency 1 Introduction Water shortage and inefficient utilization of fertilizers are among the key problems restricting the sustainable development of corn production in China (Wu et al., 2017; Shi et al., 2023). In China, agricultural water consumption accounts for over 70% of the country's total water consumption, among which irrigation water makes up more than 90% of agricultural water use. However, the water use efficiency is relatively low. The efficiency of the traditional flood irrigation method is only about 30% to 50%, resulting in a large amount of water evaporation and deep seepage loss. Meanwhile, long-term excessive fertilization has led to a nitrogen fertilizer utilization rate of less than 40% for corn, resulting in leaching or volatilization of the remaining nutrients. This not only wastes resources but also causes environmental problems such as nitrate pollution in groundwater and greenhouse gas emissions (Chen et al., 2023; Yin et al., 2024). It is reported that the application of chemical fertilizers in China has basically zero growth since 2015, but the fertilizer utilization rate of major food crops still needs to be further improved. Drip irrigation and integrated water and fertilizer technology organically combine irrigation and fertilization, and is regarded as an effective way to solve the above problems (Wu et al., 2017; Song et al., 2024). Drip irrigation is an efficient water-saving irrigation technology. It can uniformly and slowly deliver water to the area near the root zone of crops in the form of "small water droplets and high frequency" through pipeline networks and drippers. The irrigation water utilization efficiency is as high as 80%-95%, which is much higher than 25%-50% of surface flood irrigation (Ma et al., 2022). Integrated water and fertilizer management utilizes the drip irrigation system to
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