Effects of organic manures on soils and crops

Abstract

All soils which carry crops or vegetation contain organic matter, which consists of or is derived from the plants, animals and micro-organisms which live or have lived in or on the soil. Agricultural and especially horticultural soils contain also organic matter derived from whatever organic manures have been incorporated in the soil. The quantities of organic matter in soils range from below 1% (dry weight) in the soils of arid and semi-arid regions to over 80% in organic soils such as peats in which acidity, waterlogging or other conditions have checked the oxidation of the organic materials. Many British agricultural soils contain I-3% of organic matter. T h e amount of organic material in the soil represents the equilibrium between additions (parts of plants and animals and their excreta, crop residues and organic manures) and losses, mainly by biological oxidation, and for any particular, and more or less stable, set of technological or ecological circumstances it tends to a steady value.On the Broadbalk plots at Rothamsted, on a heavy clay-with-flints soil, plots which have received no manure, or mineral fertilizers only, for over 120 years, contain about 274 of organic matter ; in those which have received both mineral and nitrogen fertilizers the larger amounts of crop residues have raised this figure to about 2.4% ; and the plot to which 14 tons per acre of farmyard manure has been added each year https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi

Effect of alternative organic fertilizers on the nutritional value and yield of head cabbage

“…In published studies on the influence of different types of fertilizers on marketable yield, we often see that the highest marketable yield is obtained with mineral fertilizers and the lowest in unfertilized controls (Toor et al 2006;Warman et al 1997;Bunting 1965). It might be caused by the fact that these experiments were conducted on soils with high humus content, so that the treatments with mineral fertilizer provided faster mineralization of organic matter and a greater release of other nutrients.…”

“…Cultivation of cabbage needs fertilizing by farmyard manures (Hlušek 1996), which are natural source of organic matter. Organic matter is known to improve soil fertility by changing its physical, chemical and biological character (Bunting 1965;Richter et al 1994); vegetable production requires continuous applications of organic matter (Balík 1993;Richter 1997). However, a lot of farms specialize in vegetable production these days and they have no animals, so traditional farmyard manure (FYM) is consequently in short supply.…”