Growing giant miscanthus in Polissya on radioactively contaminated soils

Abstract

Purpose. Investigate the accumulation of 137Cs and 90Sr radionuclides in the biomass of giant miscanthus depending on the agronomic methods of growing it on radioactively contaminated soils in Polissia.
 Method. Biomorphological, radiometric, lysometric, statistical, comparative and computational.
 Results. The article presents the results of research to study the accumulation of radionuclides 137Cs and 90Sr in the biomass of giant miscanthus. It was found that in the variants where the bioenergy crop was grown on soils contaminated with radionuclides, the accumulation of 137Cs in the biomass in the range of 14.7–18.6 Bq/kg and 90Sr — 0.46–0.54 Bq/kg was observed. The use of mineral fertilizers together with liming and inoculation with giant miscanthus with the microbial preparation Polymyxobacterin and treatment with organo-mineral fertilizer BioMAG helped to reduce the accumulation of radionuclides in the biomass of giant miscanthus as following: 90Sr — by 15% and 137Cs by 21%. It was investigated that the use of these agronomic techniques contributed to the formation of dry biomass yield at the level of 9.96 t/ha on average over three years of cultivation, which is 28% higher than the control.
 Conclusion. It is established that the use of mineral fertilization in combination with liming, inoculation of rhizomes of giant miscanthus with the microbial drug Polymyxobacterin and pre-planting treatment with organo-mineral fertilizer BioMAG contributes to a significant increase in dry biomass yield with reducing 90Sr and 137Cs. The accumulation of these radioactive isotopes in the biomass of giant miscanthus when grown on radionuclide-contaminated soils did not exceed the permissible level for cereal grains, and the use of agronomic techniques helped to reduce the content of 90Sr by 9–15% and 137Cs by 12–21% compared to control. The lowest coefficients of radionuclide conversion into biomass of giant miscanthus were obtained for both 90Sr (0.15) and 137Cs (0.24) for the use of mineral fertilizers together with liming and inoculation of giant mismanthus rizomes with Polymyxobacterin and treatment with BioMAG organo-mineral fertilizer.