{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,3]],"date-time":"2026-10-03T15:56:03Z","timestamp":1791042963379,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,9]],"date-time":"2022-09-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1662681600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100012166","name":"National Key Research and Development Program of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100012166","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Plant Sci."],"abstract":"<jats:p>The balance of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) metabolism influences plant growth and development as well as yield. A two-year field experiment was conducted in a hilly region in southwest China in 2019\u20132020 to investigate the correlation between the accumulation and balance of C and N, as well as the grain yield of maize cultivars with contrasting N efficiencies. Using Zhenghong 311 (ZH 311) and Xianyu 508 (XY 508) as research sources, the differences in C and N accumulation and balance in maize cultivars with contrasting N efficiencies were compared to analyze the correlation between the accumulation and balance of C and N with grain yield. According to the results, the ZH 311 cultivar had higher C and N accumulation in each stage and grain yield than the XY 508 cultivar, while the C\/N ratio in each stage and organ was significantly lower in ZH 311 than in XY 508, with the greatest difference occurring in the silking stage and leaf, indicating that the N-efficient cultivar ZH 311 had evident advantages in accumulation and balance of C and N and grain yield than the N-inefficient cultivar XY 508. Moreover, the C and N accumulation and grain yield increased significantly with N application, while the C\/N ratio in each stage and organ decreased significantly with N application, but the differences between ZH 311 and XY 508 increased first and then decreased with the increase of N level, the optimum N level when obtaining the highest grain yield of ZH 311 (273.21 kg ha<jats:sup>\u20131<\/jats:sup>) was significantly lower than that of XY 508 (355.88 kg ha<jats:sup>\u20131<\/jats:sup>). Furthermore, grain yield was positively correlated with C (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.9251) and N (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.9033) accumulation, affected by pre-anthesis N (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.9198) and post-anthesis C (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.8632) accumulation, and negatively correlated with the C\/N ratio (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.7664), with the highest correlation between grain yield and the C\/N ratio in silking stage (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.7984) and leaf (<jats:italic>R<\/jats:italic><jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup> = 0.7616). In conclusion, the N-efficient cultivar ZH 311 could better coordinate the C and N balance of the plant, especially the C and N balance in the silking stage and leaf, promote photosynthetic product storage and transport, prolong the leaf function period, and make the pre-anthesis and post-anthesis C and N accumulation of ZH 311 significantly higher than those of XY 508, allowing higher grain yields.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpls.2022.992041","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,9]],"date-time":"2022-09-09T18:39:42Z","timestamp":1662748782000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":23,"title":["Cultivar differences in carbon and nitrogen accumulation, balance, and grain yield in maize"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Qiang","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yun","family":"Ren","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hao","family":"Fu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhexin","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Fanlei","family":"Kong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jichao","family":"Yuan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"367","DOI":"10.1007\/s11104-015-2441-5","article-title":"Carbon and nitrogen partitioning of wheat and field pea grown with two nitrogen levels under elevated CO2.","volume":"391","author":"Butterly","year":"2015","journal-title":"Plant Soil"},{"key":"B2","first-page":"2282","article-title":"Effect of nitrogen application on carbon and nitrogen metabolism of different summer maize varieties.","volume":"50","author":"Chang","year":"2017","journal-title":"Sci. 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