Assessment of soil carbon accumulation during different growth stages of banana after land conversion from a secondary forest

Abstract

Soil carbon (C) is the critical component in climate change mitigation and in improving land productivity. Banana plantation has a high potential to restore lost C pools due to its agronomic management practices which do not involve devastating activities such as burning of biomass and removal of plant residues. The understanding of C storage and its accumulation in a time series (during the growth of banana) after land conversion from a secondary forest is crucial to address climate change mitigation efforts and provide essential information on types of crops, site preference to improve the strategies and effective technique responsible for future soil C rehabilitation efforts. Hence, the objective of this study was to determine the soil C accumulation during different growth stages of banana cultivation after the land conversion from a secondary forest in Sungai Rual, Jeli Kelantan, Malaysia in the year 2018. Soil samples were consecutively collected from the five main growth stages of banana (sucker growth stage, inflorescence stage, flowering stage, bunch development stage, and maturation and sucker development stage). Ten soil samples were taken at each stage using a soil auger at depths of 0–20 and 20–40 cm to analyze for soil texture, pH, total C, soil organic matter, total N, and C/N ratio. The soil textures in the secondary forest and banana farm were sandy clay loam and sandy loam, respectively. Different growth stages of banana exerted a significant effect on the soil pH. However, total N of secondary forest and different growth stages of banana at two different soil depths were insignificant which could be attributed to the characteristics of the soil textures. This study overall did not show any significant statistical difference in the amount of soil organic matter and soil total C accumulated in all the five banana growth stages as they were still in the process of recovering the soil C content. This information can help to understand the trend and soil C storage capacity, and C accumulation process of the banana cultivation site after being converted from a secondary forest. Further, this finding of this study also facilitates the understanding on the role of the agricultural land as a C sink and source.