Effect of organic materials on improvement of Carya cathayensis forest acidic soil

Abstract

To study the effects of different organic materials (namely biogas residue; Feideli, a commercial organic fertilizer; potassium humate; and bamboo-char) for improving acidic soils in a Carya cathayensis forest, an incubation experiment and a field study were carried out. In the incubation experiment, mixtures of soil with each of the organic materials at three application rates (0, 1 and 10 g·kg-1) were incubated at 25 ℃. Each treatment were replicated 4 times. Completely randomized design was used. Soil samples were collected at 0, 10, 20, 30, 60 and 90 d. Based on the incubation experiment, bamboo-char, Feideli and potassium humate were used in the field experiment, at the rate of 2 kg·tree-1, and the blank was as ck. Four treatments with 6 replicates were randomly designed. Results showed that application of organic materials not only improved soil pH from 4.41 to 5.17 and soil exchangeable base content, but also significantly decreased (P Feideli > bamboo-char. Overall, the effect of potassium humate was more effective than other organic materials on soil acidity improvement.