Organic resource management: Impacts on soil aggregate stability and other soil physico-chemical properties

Influence of effective microorganisms and green manure on soil properties and productivity of pearl millet and alfalfa grown on sandy loam in Saudi Arabia

“…Green manure increase the concentration of K, Mn, Fe, either by increasing their solubility from soil insoluble mineral fraction or releasing these nutrients from t he decomposition of organic matter (Kapland and Estes, 1985;Mosavi et al, 2009). Karami et al (2012) found that, soil Mn concentration was increased when applying different organic matter sources. Easily decomposable residue may add substantial amounts of Fe, Mn, Cu, and P nutrients to the growing plants by increasing their availability (Walters et al, 1992).…”

Effects of cattle manure compost combined with chemical fertilizer on topsoil organic matter, bulk density and earthworm activity in a wheat–maize rotation system in Eastern China

“…The water content in the plots only fertilized with CMC was the highest, and significantly differenced (P 0.05) with CK and NPK (Fig. 4) decreased the stability of macro-aggregates and moisture retention capacity (Celik et al, 2004;Liu et al, 2013), however, manure application could improve the mean weight diameter of aggregates, total porosity and water holding capacity of soils (Rasool et al, 2008;Karami et al, 2012). Our findings clearly support that animal manure can well improve soil moisture conditions, as noteworthy and positive correlations being found between CMC input and soil water content (P 0.01) (Table 3).…”

The immediate effectiveness of barley straw mulch in reducing soil erodibility and surface runoff generation in Mediterranean vineyards

“…Mulching involves maintaining a permanent or semi-permanent protective cover on the soil surface that can be composed of different materials such as vegetative residues, biological geotextiles, gravel and crushed stones (Cerdà, 2001;Gilley et al, 1986;Jordán et al, 2010;Mandal and Sharda, 2013;Smets et al, 2008;Xu et al, 2012;Zhao et al, 2013). The beneficial effects of mulching can be summarized as follows: i) increased water intake and storage (Cook et al, 2006;Mulumba and Lal, 2008), ii) protection of soil against raindrop impact, reducing erosion rates (Blavet et al, 2009;Jordán et al, 2010;Sadeghi et al, 2015a), iii) decreased sediment and nutrient concentrations in runoff (Cerdà, 1998;Gholami et al, 2013;Poesen and Lavee, 1991), iv) decreased runoff generation rates and surface flow velocity by increasing roughness (Cerdà, 2001;Jordán et al, 2010), v) improved infiltration capacity (Jordán et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2014), vi) increased activity of some species of earthworms and crop performance (Wooldridge and Harris, 1991), vii) enhanced soil physical conditions such as soil structure and organic content (De Silva and Cook, 2003;Jordán et al, 2010;Karami et al, 2012), viii) reduced topsoil temperature for more optimum germination and root development (Dahiya et al, 2007;Riddle et al, 1996) and decreased evaporation (Uson and Cook, 1995), and xix) enhanced interactions with nutrients (Campiglia et al, 2014;Movahedi Naeni and Cook, 2000). Among the different types of mulching, straw mulch is considered one of the most effective in achieving the above-mentioned benefits (Blavet et al, 2009;Dahiya et al, 2007).…”