Because of intensive vegetable production in plastic greenhouses in northern China, the potential risk of nitrate leaching to groundwater is increasingly apparent, threatening ecosystem services and the sustainability of food production. In the present work, nine drainable lysimeters were installed into vegetable fields, with in-situ loamy soils, in Shouguang City of the north China vegetable base. The experiments were conducted to quantify the magnitude and variability of nitrate leaching to groundwater and to access the fate of total fertilizer-N inputs in the area. The results obtained indicated that: under local conventional agronomic practices, there is a high discrepancy in leaching nitrate-N concentration (ranging from 17 to 457 mgL⁻¹), and nitrate losses (152–347 kgNha⁻¹) were observed from 1-m soil profiles in the field. Meanwhile, high fertilizer N application resulted in low N efficiency, with only   ( ) of input N absorbed by the crops, while additionally nearly half of the total inputs of N were unaccounted in a partial N balance sheet. It is concluded that groundwater pollution associated with greenhouse-based vegetable production had been confirmed in Shouguang, adversely affecting water quality and leading to serial agro-ecological problems. To cite this article: X.-Z. Song et al., C. R. Biologies 332 (2009).