Abstract

Yue-Hong Wang, Yu-Jia Li, Xin-Hua He,Md. Rezaul Karim, Xiao-Jun Shi,De-Ti Xie and Yue-Qiang Zhang

Crop magnesium (Mg) deficiency is widespread in global agriculture, but limited assessment is available on how crop yield could respond to Mg fertilization at national or regional scale. This meta-analysis from 196 paired datasets evaluated the different yield responses of 49 crop species under Mg fertilization at the southern and northern region of China where 50% soils were Mg-deficient. The results showed that under Mg fertilization the crop yields were averagely increased by 19.2%, 11.3% and 16.6% in southern China, northern China and the whole country, respectively. Meanwhile, significantly greater yield increment of crop types under Mg fertilization ranked as vegetables (20.1%) ≈ fruits (19.6%) >cereals (6.5%). In conclusion, Mg fertilization is recommended to enhance yield and quality of fruit and vegetable crops in subtropical and tropical China and other similar countries