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- Title
Amendments with humified compost effectively sequester organic carbon in agricultural soils.
- Authors
Spaccini, Riccardo; Piccolo, Alessandro
- Abstract
Preventing degradation of soil quality and productivity entails development of sustainable practices to enhance soil organic matter. We followed soil organic carbon (OC) accumulation during 3 years long‐field experiments in two different Italian soils under conventional tillage (TRA), reduced tillage (MIN), green manure (GM) and two rates (low, CMPL, and, high, CMPH) of mature compost amendments. Despite soil textures differences, CMP additions enhanced in both field sites OC accumulation in either bulk soils or water‐stable aggregates (WSA), especially for CMPH, that was more pronounced than for MIN and GM. While the sum of OC in WSA showed an average retention of 80–90% of cumulative carbon added with compost, incorporated OC in WSA of MIN and GM reached only 26 and 55% of total carbon amended with fresh biomass for the light and heavy textured soils, respectively. Hence, MIN and GM accumulated SOC only up to the physical saturation limit dictated by soil texture, whereas CMP retained a larger additional SOC than TRA due to hydrophobic affinity among apolar domains progressively added to soil with humified compost. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of humus extracted after the first and third treatment year confirmed this behaviour. While no changes were observed in spectra for MIN and GM, humic extracts from CMP showed significantly larger content of apolar alkyl and aromatic moieties after the third experimental year. Our results suggest that soil amendment with well humified compost is an effective practice to sequester carbon into agricultural soils, besides improving their organic fertility.
- Subjects
CARBON in soils; NO-tillage; HUMUS; COMPOSTING; SOIL texture; SOIL amendments; VERMICOMPOSTING
- Publication
Land Degradation & Development, 2020, Vol 31, Issue 10, p1206
- ISSN
1085-3278
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/ldr.3524