Abstract:Aiming to investigate the effects of fertigation on spring maize growth, yield, and nitrogen absorption and utilization efficiency, soil NO-3N distribution and residual amount in sandy soil area in Ningxia, to provide a theoretical and experimental basis for the irrigation and nitrogen management of spring maize in this area. The plot experiments were conducted with two factors of irrigation and nitrogen. There were three irrigation levels (W0.6, 0.6KcET0;W0.8, 0.8KcET0 and W1.0, KcET0, Kc was the crop coefficients, ET0 was the potential reference crops evapotranspiration) and four nitrogen levels (N150,150kg/hm2;N225, 225kg/hm2;N300, 300kg/hm2 and N375, 375kg/hm2). The results showed that under the same irrigation levels, the dry matter accumulation rate, shoot biomass, yield, water use efficiency and nitrogen accumulation rate (except for W0.8 treatment) were increased at first, and then decreased with the increase of nitrogen application rate. The yield of W0.8N300 treatment was 16387kg/hm2, reached the maximum value. During the fast-growing period, the dry matter average accumulation rate of W1.0N300 and the nitrogen average accumulation rate of W0.8N375 treatment were the highest, which were 513.71kg/(hm2·d) and 2.75kg/(hm2·d), respectively. Compared with other irrigation treatments, the N remobilization of vegetative organs under W0.8 irrigation level was the highest, which was 84.67%. Both irrigation and nitrogen application amount were increased at the same time, and the soil NO-3N residual amount was increased gradually in the 60~100cm at the same time. At W0.6 and W0.8 irrigation levels, the soil NO-3N residual amount was mainly concentrated in the 0~60cm and 0~90cm soil layers, respectively. Considering the uneven distribution of annual rainfall in Ningxia, the results suggested that it was an appropriate schedule for spring maize in this area when the sum of irrigation and effective rainfall amount was 532mm and nitrogen application rate was 300kg/hm2.