Nitrate leaching and soil tillage practices: global vs. Brazilian research trends for 2001-2011 and 2012-20221

Abstract

This review article analyzed studies on nitrate leaching in an agricultural context, specifically comparing nitrate leaching between conventional and no-tillage systems, and also investigated the trends in research regarding this topic across two decades (2001-2011 and 2012-2022), both globally and in Brazil. The number of global studies focused on nitrate leaching during both decades varied across the analyzed databases, whereas Brazilian researches were scarce. Notably, the research on nitrate leaching in the no-tillage system was scarce overall, both globally and particularly in Brazil. Nevertheless, the global interest in agriculture-associated nitrate leaching increased between 2001-2011 and 2012-2022, as evidenced by the increasing number of publications across all the databases. In addition, the number of global studies on nitrate leaching in the no-tillage system increased during the last two decades, although this interest has not been emulated in Brazil. Among the 22 analyzed articles, 13 supported the no-tillage system as a strategy to reduce nitrate leaching, when compared to conventional tillage; 6 showed no significant difference between both systems; and 3 detected a reduction in leaching in the conventional tillage.