【Objective】Greenhouse vegetable production in China has played an important role in ensuring market vegetable supply and increasing the income of farmers. As in the greenhouse vegetable production, a high rate of fertilizer was applied, the production brings about a series of environmental problems, such as soil degradation and increased risk of greenhouse gas emission, which undermines the sustainability of the greenhouse vegetable production. In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the problem of non-point source pollution and labor shortage the greenhouse vegetable production faces are prominent. It has become an urgent need to have some labor-saving, efficiency-enhancing, and environment-friendly fertilization techniques. Fertigation is a technology that can save both water and fertilizer, improve fertilizer utilization efficiency, and reduce greenhouse gas emission. Fertigation is mainly applied in greenhouses in the water-deficient areas in North China, and no so common in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. So little is available in the literature about the effects of fertigation on emission reduction and efficiency improvement in this area. 【Method】 In this study, a field experiment, designed to have three treatments, i.e. CK (no N fertilizer applied) , SF (chemical fertilizer broadcast) and DF (fertigation) , was conducted in Yixing, Jiangsu. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) was grown in a row of plastic greenhouses. In Treatment SF, chemical fertilizer was broadcast three times, one base application and two topdressings, making up a total of 225 kg·hm^–2 nitrogen (N) , and in Treatment DF, 225 kg·hm^–2 fertilizer was divided into five portions applied with irrigation separately as topdressing. Then, yield, N use efficiency, ammonia volatilization rate, and soil soluble N were measured for each treatment and systematically analyzed. 【Result】 Results show that fertigation significantly improved N use efficiency, and reduced soil ammonia volatilization rate and cumulative ammonia emissions, as compared with the treatment with fertilizer broadcast at the same N application rate. Treatment DF increased N use efficiency from 23.92% to 40.89% and was 71.10% higher than Treatment SF, and reduced cumulative ammonia emission from 37.25 kg·hm^–2 to 3.07 kg·hm^–2, and the ammonia loss rate from 16.56% to 1.36% during the entire tomato growth period. In Treatment CK, SF and DF, the mean NO₃^–-N residue in soil was 32.18, 45.70, and 67.06 mg·kg^–1, and the mean NH₄⁺-N residue in the 0-50 cm soil layer was 3.07, 8.27, and 19.27 mg·kg^–1, respectively. Fertigation significantly reduced the soil NO₃^–-N residues by 31.85% as compared to the treatment of fertilizer broadcast. However, it increases the risk of N leaching to some extent. 【Conclusion】 Fertigation is an efficient method combining irrigation and fertilization, which can significantly improve N use efficiency and reduce ammonia volatilization loss and soluble N residues, when applied to greenhouse vegetable fields in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. All the findings of the research may serve as a scientific basis for extrapolation of the technique of fertigation in the Lower Yangtze River Region.