Compost, leonardite, and zeolite impacts on soil microbial community under barley crops

Abstract

There is little information about the potential effects of compost and zeolite or zeolite with leonardite as soil amendments in barley cultivation. Thus in this study, the following objectives were proposed: i) to compare the effects of the addition of compost, alone or simultaneously with zeolite, and of the addition of leonarditeenriched zeolite with those of the conventional NPK fertilization used in barley cultivation, on the soil nutritional status, microbial community structure, and enzyme activity in different stages of barley cultivation; and ii) to establish relationships between the different soil parameter trends, soil microbial community structure, and barley crop yield. In the field experiment carried out with a barley crop, the alternative fertilization treatments tested had an overall positive effect, in comparison with conventional fertilization with a mineral NPK fertilizer, when soil quality parameters, the nutritional level and yield of the barley crop were analyzed. Zeolite with leonardite increased barley yield in comparison with the compost treatments, either with zeolite or without, but had an excessive contribution to the water soluble contents of Na and N in soil. So, using environmental and agronomic criteria, the most rational action would be the use of compost in agriculture.

Microbial community structure and biomass of a mine soil with different organic and inorganic treatments and native plants

“…The analysis of the phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) makes possible to examine broad scale patterns in microbial community structure (Frostegård et al, 1993a) and generally, after the application of multivariate statistical analyses, whole community fatty acids profiles indicate which communities are similar or different. Thus, the PLFA technique has been used to compare microbial communities during altered environmental conditions under wide ranges of soil types, management practices, climatic origins and different perturbations (Frostegård et al, 1993a,b;Barreiro et al, 2010;Mahía et al, 2011;Fernández-Calviño et al, 2012;González-Gómez et al, 2013;Muhammad et al, 2016;Moreno et al, 2017).…”

Strawberry monocropping: Impacts on fruit yield and soil microorganisms

“…It may well be that the decline in organic matter content (substrate limitation) was the main cause of the lower microbial biomass and activity observed in P1. The addition of compost had positive effects on the soil nutritional status, microbial community structure, and enzyme activity in different stages of barley cultivation (Moreno et al, 2017). Application of organic manures had significant influence on organic carbon depleted arable soils by improving maize productivity and soil physico-chemical properties (Mahmood et al, 2017).…”

Anaerobic degradation of municipal organic waste among others composting techniques improves N cycling through waste-soil-plant continuum

“…Therefore, fertilizer value of the composted waste has been extensively studied but main focus had been on livestock wastes (Scotti et al, 2015;Rigby et al, 2016;Shah et al, 2012Shah et al, , 2013Shah et al, , 2016aMoreno et al, 2017), whereas little work has been done on fertilizer value of MSW compost (Hargreaves et al, 2008b;Romero et al, 2013). Likewise, to the best of our knowledge no work has been done so far investigating the effect of various composting methods on N cycling from waste-soil-plant continuum.…”