Impacts of Sulfur, Nitrogen, and Their Interaction on Soil Moisture, Physiology, Growth, and Yield of No-till Dryland Spring Wheat.

In recent years, producers of the MonDak Region (the Western North Dakota and Eastern Montana of the USA) have been observing sulfur deficiencies in several crops including hard red spring wheat.  The rise in sulfur deficiency can be attributed to several factors such as a decrease in air pollution, improved purity of agricultural chemical products, and depletion in soil organic matter as a result of continuous cropping.  Currently, one of the serious challenges to sulfur fertility management is that a soil test sulfur is not a reliable source for sulfur recommendation, as sulfur deficiency might occur even in soil with high soil organic matter content.  This experiment was conducted to determine a judicious management of sulfur and nitrogen fertilizer in spring wheat to get maximum yield with better grain quality under no-till dryland condition.  The experiment consisted of nitrogen (main plots:  0, 67, 112, 157, and 202 kg ha-1) and sulfur (sub-plots: 0, 11, and 22 kg ha-1) fertilizer treatments arranged under split plot design. Each treatment was replicated four times and the size of a sub-plot was 6 m × 4.5 m.  The effects of treatments and their interaction on soil moisture, canopy temperature, leaf chlorophyll, N and S content of leaf tissues, growth, and crop yield are presented.