The Yellow River irrigation district of Ningxia is an important agricultural area in North China, where the nitrate leaching and water pollution have been an increasing problem in recent year. Water in a number of drainage ditches is of Inferior quality, in which the main pollutants are nitrate and ammonium nitrogen. The concentration of ammonium is usually 20-30mg/L and can be much higher up to 70 mg/L in extreme cases, so that downstream water quality is severely affected. The proportion of total nitrogen and ammonia nitrogen from field was up to 61%-66% and 76%-81%, respectively. The concentration of nitrate nitrogen in about half of shallow groundwater was more than 10 mg/L. Content of soil organic matter, ranging from 9.2 to 14.5g/kg with the mean of 10.2 g/kg, was low; consequently it facilitates the loss of soil nutrient nitrate nitrogen. In this study, we investigated the effect of swine manure application in management of nitrate nitrogen leaching and improvement of soil organic matter in this area. The characters of nitrate nitrogen leaching in paddy fields in the Yellow River irrigation district of Ningxia were explored in the condition of swine manure application. The field experiment was conducted with 3 treatments: tradition fertilization without swine manure (CK), tradition fertilization with swine manure of 4500kg/hm²(T₁)and tradition fertilization with swine manure of 9000 kg/hm²(T₂). Nitrate nitrogen leaching rates were measured for 30, 60, 90 cm depth soil layer with a resin core absorption method. The results are shown as follows: (1) The treatments with swine manure application reduced the nitrate nitrogen leaching loss at 60 and 90 cm depth soil layers in the paddy field during rice growth period. The decreases were 4.93% (60 cm) and 13.92% (90 cm) for T1 vs. CK and 7.48% (60 cm) and 13.77% (90 cm) for T2 vs. CK. (2) In comparisons of the statistical significance of nitrogen leaching loss at the same soil layer between different treatments (P < 0.05), the variations among T₁, T₂ and CK were not significant at 30 cm depth. In the soil samples from 60 cm depth, T₁ and CK were not significantly different, while T₂ was significantly different from CK. Compared to CK, both T₁ and T₂ caused a significant reduction in nitrogen loss at 90 cm depth. Meanwhile, the difference between T₁ and T₂ were significant at 60 and 90 cm depth. Although the nitrate nitrogen leaching loss of T₁ and T₂ were higher than that of CK at 30 cm depth, the difference did not reach statistical significance among CK and T₁ and T₂. (3) The nitrate nitrogen leaching loss was 13.61-17.77 kg/hm² (pure nitrogen) in different soil layers during rice growth period. The major loss accounting for 61.62%-72.84% of the whole growth period occurred during the time from rice transplantation to tillering, corresponding to the season from middle May to end of June, and the loss was obviously alleviated at the late stage of rice growth. (4) The rice yield in T₁ and T₂ was increased by 15.86% and 12.85%, respectively. Taken together, our study suggests that swine manure application is effective to prevent nitrate nitrogen leaching loss in the Yellow River irrigation district of Ningxia and beneficial to rice production as well.