Abstract
To address the low productivity of sandy farmlands, our study aimed to conduct a comparative study on the effects of different organic amendment (OA) inputs for the potential improvement of crop yield and soil quality in sandy alkaline farmlands through the selection of a suitable OA. This study set up straw (ST) returning as control and chemical fertilizer (CF) treatment as a side control, and chose three OAs returning as treatments, including pig manure (PM), biogas residue (BR), and straw biochar (BC), for improving soil fertility, with all amendments having matched doses of nitrogen (N). The experiment was conducted at the Wuqiao Experimental Station (37°41 N, 116°37 E) of China Agricultural University in Hebei Province, China, from October 2012 to September 2016. The cropping rotation was the winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)-summer maize (Zea mays L.) rotation system. Through a consecutive four-year field experiment, the principal results showed that three types of OA application significantly increased soil organic carbon from 1.46 g kg−1 to 8.24 g kg−1, soil total N from 0.21 g kg−1 to 0.64 g kg−1, soil available potassium from 55.85 mg kg−1 to 288.76 mg kg−1, and soil available phosphate from 4.86 mg kg−1 to 65.00 mg kg−1 in the 0–20 cm soil layer. The BR was the most effective in improving soil nutrients as compared with the ST. The PM and BR treatments were more conducive to promoting crop yield by 6–20% than ST, and the BC treatment significantly reduced the yield of winter wheat by 19% and summer maize by 8%. As the BR and PM treatments improved the soil nutrient content and significantly increased crop yield, these were the top choices for transforming the low-yield sandy farmlands.
Highlights
There has been an increase in the land application of organic amendments (OA) such as manure, biosolids, green wastes, and composts because of their potential to boost soil carbon (C), improve fertility, help mitigate climate change, support soil health, and for regenerative agriculture [1,2,3,4,5]
Analyses through the spatial autocorrelation analysis and the geographical information system (GIS) technology show that the potential grain yield of the Huang-Huai-Hai (3H) plain could reach 33.05 million tons, of which the transformation of medium- and low-yield fields accounted for 73.04% of the increase in grain yield [10]
This study aimed to screen out suitable OAs for the improvement of soil quality and crop yield in alkaline sandy farmlands, which is of great practical significance for medium- and low-yield farmland transformation and food security in China
Summary
There has been an increase in the land application of organic amendments (OA) such as manure, biosolids, green wastes, and composts because of their potential to boost soil carbon (C), improve fertility, help mitigate climate change, support soil health, and for regenerative agriculture [1,2,3,4,5]. The transformation of medium- and low-yield farmlands is mainly achieved using feasible agricultural measures to improve the level of farmland production, so that these farmlands could gradually become high-yield croplands. It can be seen that middleand low-yield farmlands in China have great potential to increase production and income through an effective transformation using currently feasible technological processes. The OA can provide high concentrations of essential plant nutrients and help increase soil quality [2,12], which is very suitable for the improvement of medium- and low-yield farmlands. Modification of medium- and low-yield farmlands by improving soil quality can alleviate the shortage of agricultural cultivation land and improve total grain yield
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