Abstract
Agricultural management, environmentally friendly technologies, chemical, organic and bio-based substances used, as well as meteorological factors, have a significant impact on the fluctuations of soil organic carbon (SOC). The aim of this research was to analyze the effect of different biopreparations on the changes of SOC content and the winter wheat and winter oilseed rape yields by assessing the energy consumption efficiency and the environmental impacts. The experimental research was conducted from 2017 to 2019 in three different treatments, in two of which were used either a molasses and magnesium sulphate based-biopreparation (T1) or a bacteria-based biopreparation (T2), while treatment T3 was applied as a control where no biopreparations were used. The dynamics of SOC content were analyzed at two depths: 0–10 and 10–20 cm. For the analysis of energy efficiency indicators and environmental impacts, the greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy consumption conversion equivalents were used. A summary of the results showed that both types of biopreparations had a positive effect on the changes of SOC content, which was especially evident in the deeper layers at 10–20 cm depth, where, irrespective of the crop type, a more significant increase of the SOC content was observed every year of the experiment compared to the control treatment. Biopreparations had a significant effect in increasing the winter wheat and winter oilseed rape yield. The best energy efficiency ratio was observed in winter wheat (4.84) and winter oilseed rape (5.11) in treatment T1. The results of the environmental impact assessment showed that the lowest GHG emissions were recorded in the winter wheat production in treatment T1 at 108.7–149.1 kg CO2eq Mg−1, while the highest were observed in oilseed rape production in the control treatment T3 at 343.4 kg CO2eq Mg−1.
Highlights
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is one of the crucial elements of the global carbon cycle
A similar tendency was observed in the spring of every year—control treatment T3 consistently showed a larger concentration of SOC than T1 and T2 treatments
Our research showed that in all years of the experiment, mineral fertilizer played a key role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions both from winter wheat and winter oilseed rape production, which accounted for 65.6% (2017) to 61.4% (2019) of the total GHG emissions from winter wheat and 72.3% from winter oilseed rape
Summary
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is one of the crucial elements of the global carbon cycle. On a global level, the amount of carbon stored in soil at a depth of 1 m (1460 Gt) exceeds the amount of carbon found in atmosphere (800 Gt) and in vegetation (560 Gt) put together [1]. SOC values ranged from 14.8 (2016) to 15.6 g kg−1 (2013) in topsoil (0–0.3 m), and from 7.5 (2015) to 10.4 g kg−1 (2013) in subsoil (0.3–0.6 m).The multiannual research conducted by Yang et al [11] indicated that the use of mineral fertilizer along with farmyard manure (FYM) results in a more significant increase in the amount of SOC than fertilization with mineral fertilizer only. Blair et al [12] claim that over a period of more than 100 years, fertilization with 35 t ha−1 year−1 of FYM resulted in a 2.5-times increase of the total SOC content compared to the control results where no fertilizer was used. It may be concluded that in most cases, the amount of SOC increases with the use of any mineral or organic fertilizer, and this change essentially depends on the properties of the soil, the crops grown therein and the type of fertilizer used, as well as its amount
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