As organic manure is becoming less available, using different materials as soil fertilizers and the application of the inorganic fertilizers raises many questions. Therefore, it is increasingly important to use compost and biogas digestate to improve soil quality. The activity of the microbial communities ensures the fertility of the soil. One of the most important enzymes is dehydrogenase. This enzyme group catalyses the hydrogen transfer in the process of biological oxidation. Our aim was to examine the effect of biogas digestate on dehydrogenase enzyme activity (DHA) in 3 different types of soil. Hungarian standard method was used to evaluate DHA. The applied biogas digestate was obtained from the Kaposvár Sugar Factory of Hungarian Sugar Ltd. The dose is equal to 16,7 m3ha-1 and 533 kg organic matterha-1. The treatment was performed in three different groups of soil: brown forest soil, calcareous chernozem and carbonate meadow soil. The results showed an increase in DHA in all types of soil. DHA values were the highest in case of the carbonate meadow soil, specifically 0.337 mg formazan/1 g soil/24 h immediately after the treatment and 0.410 after 28 days. A critical aspect to consider during the construction of biogas plants is the soil protection agency’s ban on using soil fertilizers during the winter months. Analysis carried out according to the protocol of sewage sludge examination revealed that biofermentate produced during biogas generation does not contain any environmentally harmful components. After the elaboration of a soil protection plan, the recommended way to apply biogas digestate to arable land is via injectors.

Aim of this paper is to examine the effect of spiked copper (Cu), nickel (Ni) and lead (Pb) metal salts on the dehydrogenase (oxydo-reductase) and phosphatase (hydrolase) enzyme activities in a characteristic Hungarian soil, the pseudomycelliar chernozem. Pot-experiment was performed with a soil, originating from a spot of the Hungarian soil-information-monitoring (TIM) system of Bicserd. The added metal salts were used in water soluble forms and incorporated uniformly to the soil. Soils were treated with increasing metal concentrations to give the following metal amounts: 0, 50, 200, and 800 kg.ha-1. Enzyme activities of the soil were analysed at the 0th, 7 th, 14 th, and 28th days after the metal addition. The laboratory model-experiment has been set up in three replicates. Effects of metal salts were largely dependent on the chemical and physical properties of pseudomycelliar chernozem soil, the applied heavy metal-types, the doses of used metals and the elapsed time after the pollution. Considering the different metals, the copper prowed to be the most toxic one on the studied enzyme activities, whereas the lead induced those. By comparison with copper the nickel affected a smaller decrease in the soil microbial activity. The dehydrogenase, oxydo-reductase enzyme was found to be more sensitive parameter in comparison with the phosphatase, hydrolase enzyme among the studied condition. Studied enzymes and used methods are suggested, as fast and rather reliable tools for estimating the soil-resilience capacities at heavy metal pollution.