Review Article

Precision Nitrogen Management in Crop Production

Prakash Neupane¹, Shankar Neupane², Karan Singh Dhami²*

¹LI-BIRD, Surkhet, Nepal

²Graduate School of Agriculture and Forestry, Mid- West University, Surkhet, Nepal

*Corresponding author e-mail: karandhami4u@yahoo.com

(Received: 01/09/2025; Revised: 30/11/2025; Accepted: 30/11/2025; Published: 20/12/2025)

ABSTRACT

Precision nitrogen management is a management practice where the optimum amount of nitrogen (N) is supplied according to the demand of the crop. It is the best management practice that is used to protect and conserve natural resources, as nitrogen is most important for crop production and an excess amount of nitrogen can easily escape into the environment, resulting in groundwater pollution, eutrophication dead zones and other harmful effects.  It is environmentally friendly as it controls environmental pollution by reducing the excess use of N fertilizer. The loss of N fertilizer mainly occurs due to leaching, runoff, volatilization, denitrification and nitrogen fixation. In Nepal, there is a high loss of nitrogen as farmers use fertilizers haphazardly. This loss is minimized by using different decision support tools. Different tools used for N fertilizer management are LCC, SPAD and the Green Seeker optical sensor tool. These tools help to determine the demand of N by the crop and fertilizer can be used according to it. These tools have high efficiency and can be easily and effectively used.

Keywords: precision, crop, nitrogen, fertilizer, tools