Fly ash application in nutrient poor agriculture soils: Impact on methanotrophs population dynamics and paddy yields

Abstract

There are reports that the application of fly ash, compost and press mud or a combination thereof, improves plant growth, soil microbial communities etc. Also, fly ash in combination with farmyard manure or other organic amendments improves soil physico-chemical characteristics, rice yield and microbial processes in paddy fields. However, the knowledge about the impact of fly ash inputs alone or in combination with other organic amendments on soil methanotrophs number in paddy soils is almost lacking. We hypothesized that fly ash application at lower doses in paddy agriculture soil could be a potential amendment to elevate the paddy yields and methanotrophs number. Here we demonstrate the impact of fly ash and press mud inputs on number of methanotrophs, antioxidants, antioxidative enzymatic activities and paddy yields at agriculture farm. The impact of amendments was significant for methanotrophs number, heavy metal concentration, antioxidant contents, antioxidant enzymatic activities and paddy yields. A negative correlation was existed between higher doses of fly ash-treatments and methanotrophs number (R2=0.833). The content of antioxidants and enzymatic activities in leaves of higher doses fly ash-treated rice plants increased in response to stresses due to heavy metal toxicity, which was negatively correlated with rice grain yield (R2=0.944) and paddy straw yield (R2=0.934). A positive correlation was noted between heavy metals concentrations and different antioxidant and enzymatic activities across different fly ash treated plots.The data of this study indicate that heavy metal toxicity of fly ash may cause oxidative stress in the paddy crop and the antioxidants and related enzymes could play a defensive role against phytotoxic damages. We concluded that fly ash at lower doses with press mud seems to offer the potential amendments to improving soil methanotrophs population and paddy crop yields for the nutrient poor agriculture soils.