Many developing countries are faced with the competing challenges of ensuring adequate food supply by increasing agricultural yields while reducing environmental damage caused by fertilizer overuse. Xin-Ping Chen et al. (pp. 6399-6404) propose a solution to this problem for places such as China and India, which alone accounted for more than three-fourths of the worldwide increase in nitrogen fertilizer use between 2000 and 2009; yet, both countries struggle to meet the nutritional demands of burgeoning populations. The authors explored the use of an integrated soil and crop management system based on agricultural modeling studies to improve yields across nine provinces in China's maize belt without substantial increases in nitrogen fertilizer use. The authors chose optimal combinations of plant variety, planting dates, crop density, and fertilizer management tactics to ensure maximum benefits from solar radiation and from favorable temperatures, and found that the average yield of maize nearly doubled on 66 experimental farms compared with the average yield obtained using farm-ers current agricultural practices.
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