Diffuse nitrate (NO3-) contamination from intense agriculture adversely impacts freshwater ecosystems, and can also pose a risk to human health if receiving surface waters are used for drinking water production. Implementation of near-natural mitigation zones such as reactive swales or wetlands have been proven to be promising measures to reduce nitrate loads in agricultural drainage waters. However, the behaviour of these systems at low temperatures and its dependence on system design is not well known until now. In this part of the Aquisafe project, the behaviour of a full scale (length: 45 m) infiltration ditch and two parallel wetlands (surface flow wetland and infiltration wetland) treating drainage water of two agricultural watersheds in Brittany (France) with high nitrate concentrations in the receiving river, were constructed and monitored for 3 flow seasons in 2011, 2012 and 2013 to evaluate field scale performance of these systems. As the flow in both sites is usually restricted to winter and spring months (December – May), systems usually operate at low water temperatures of 5°C - 10°C. Tracer tests revealed shorter than designed retention times (average values for whole flow season 2013: 1.1 h for infiltration ditch, 4.3 h for infiltration wetland and 8.4 h for surface wetland) due to high inflows and preferential flow. This likely is the main reason for observed low average retention of nitrate loads of 1.5-3% during the whole flow season. However, increase of relative nitrate retention to up to 80% during low flow conditions at the end of flow season in May with higher HRT and increasing temperatures show that investigated systems generally work. Results show a stronger correlation between residence time and nitrate reduction for all three systems compared to correlation with temperature. Retention times necessary in existing systems to achieve nitrate retention >30% were 1 day for infiltration ditch and 3 days for wetlands. Performance was compared to results of two technical scale reactive swales (length: 8 m) operated for 1.5 years at two different residence times (0.4 and 2.5 days), situated at a test site of the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) in Berlin (Germany). Similar nitrate reduction was observed for comparable temperature and HRT values (during low flow conditions at end of flow season 2013), showing that up-scaling is a suitable approach to transfer knowledge gathered from technical scale experiments to field conditions. For the design of new mitigation systems, expected inflow volumes have to be investigated carefully in advance to ensure a sufficient residence time for effective nitrate reduction at low temperatures.