The effect of little and often fertiliser application on plant-microbe competition, nitrogen use efficiency, growth and crop yield of winter wheat.

Nitrogen use efficiency of crops is an extremely important, topical issue. Even more so following current global events leading to rapid inflation of nitrogen (N) fertiliser prices. Because of this, there is an increased global interest in agricultural techniques which can maintain high crop yields by using less N fertiliser or to increase crop yield from the same fertiliser quantity. We investigated whether applying N fertiliser in smaller, more frequent doses, would lead to increased nitrogen use efficiency, crop biomass or crop yield in winter wheat. We also studied the effect of splitting N fertiliser applications into smaller more frequent doses on plant-microbe competition. We found that application of fertiliser had a positive effect on crop biomass and crop yield whilst reducing plant-microbe competition. We did not, however, find any significant results concerning the difference between the little and often fertiliser treatment and the regular fertiliser treatment. We suggest no significant differences between the treatments was observed due to timings of fertiliser application. We propose that under little and often fertiliser application, timings of application may not align with what is recommended for regular fertilisation applications. We recommend a late-stage application, around anthesis, to see improvement in crop biomass and yield following little and often fertiliser application.