TY - JOUR
T1 - Application of biochars to sandy and silty soil failed to increase maize yield under common agricultural practice
AU - Borchard, Nils
AU - Siemens, Jan
AU - Ladd, Brenton
AU - Möller, Andreas
AU - Amelung, Wulf
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) . Many thanks are owed to Adolf Kiener, Anke Lindecke and Minh-Chi Tran-Thi for the help with laboratory analyses and measurements. The authors thank to Mothermik GmbH for providing the gasification coke and to Pytec GmbH for providing flash-pyrolysis char. Grateful acknowledgement for pre-submission review goes to Claudia Kammann and Nicolas Brüggemann as well as to the editorial board of Soil and Tillage research and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
PY - 2014/12
Y1 - 2014/12
N2 - Adding biochar to tropical soils is a strategy for improving crop yield and mitigating climate change, but how various biochar types affect crop yield and the properties of temperate soils is still in dispute. Here, we evaluated how slow-pyrolysis charcoal and two biochars derived from energy production (gasification coke and flash-pyrolysis char) affected the growth of Zea mays L. and the related properties of sandy and silty soils within a 3-year mesocosm experiment. Fertilization was performed to optimize plant growth as would be done under common agricultural practice. Analyses included the monitoring of yield, plant and soil nutrients, aggregate stability, cation exchange and water holding capacity, and black carbon content. The results showed that the added biochars did not affect crop yield at an application rate of 15gbiocharkg-1 of soil. Increasing the application rate of slow-pyrolysis charcoal to 100gkg-1 resulted in decreased plant biomass in the second and third year of the experiment, likely as a result of nutrient imbalances and N-immobilization. We did not detect any degradation of the added black carbon; however, beneficial effects on plants were limited by the small and transient effect of these biochars on the physical and chemical properties of soil. Overall, our results indicate that the added carbon from biochars is stored in soil, but all treatments tested failed to improve plant yield for the studied temperate soils under the given application rates and common agricultural practice.
AB - Adding biochar to tropical soils is a strategy for improving crop yield and mitigating climate change, but how various biochar types affect crop yield and the properties of temperate soils is still in dispute. Here, we evaluated how slow-pyrolysis charcoal and two biochars derived from energy production (gasification coke and flash-pyrolysis char) affected the growth of Zea mays L. and the related properties of sandy and silty soils within a 3-year mesocosm experiment. Fertilization was performed to optimize plant growth as would be done under common agricultural practice. Analyses included the monitoring of yield, plant and soil nutrients, aggregate stability, cation exchange and water holding capacity, and black carbon content. The results showed that the added biochars did not affect crop yield at an application rate of 15gbiocharkg-1 of soil. Increasing the application rate of slow-pyrolysis charcoal to 100gkg-1 resulted in decreased plant biomass in the second and third year of the experiment, likely as a result of nutrient imbalances and N-immobilization. We did not detect any degradation of the added black carbon; however, beneficial effects on plants were limited by the small and transient effect of these biochars on the physical and chemical properties of soil. Overall, our results indicate that the added carbon from biochars is stored in soil, but all treatments tested failed to improve plant yield for the studied temperate soils under the given application rates and common agricultural practice.
KW - Biochar
KW - Black carbon stability
KW - Crop yield
KW - Gasification
KW - Pyrolysis
KW - Temperate climate
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84905652879&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.still.2014.07.016
DO - 10.1016/j.still.2014.07.016
M3 - Artículo
AN - SCOPUS:84905652879
VL - 144
SP - 184
EP - 194
JO - Soil and Tillage Research
JF - Soil and Tillage Research
SN - 0167-1987
ER -