ANITA JASWAL AND ARSHDEEP SINGH*
Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-144 411 (Punjab), India
*(e-mail : soniajaswals@yahoo.com); Mobile: 8558086139
(Received : September 2, 2018; Accepted : November 18, 2018)
ABSTRACT
Soil health is improved by the application of biochar. There is wide range of biochars, crops and soils and all are maintained by the biochar amendment to improve crop growth with the use of nutrients. The main aim to apply biochars in the soil is to improve the nitrogen use efficiency and uptake by the plants and to improve crop growth, with the uses of same piece of land. This is done in the China to check the effect of biochar on soil. In China the researcher observed five different types of agricultural soils. Researchers used four different treatments i.e. the soil itself as a control, the soil amended with 1% biochar, the soil with fertilizer NPK and the soil with added biochar and fertilizer. The biomass of maize was increased through biochars. In the red soil, nitrogen use efficiency was increased (P<0.05) but not in other soils (P>0.05), where it remained same. Biomass under the biochar + NPK in red soil was 2.67-3.49 times higher than in NPK. Contrarily, biochar amendments increased biomass by only 1.48-1.62 times. Thus, biochar had contributed 21-36 and 35-42%, respectively. This research indicated that the biochar amendments gave positive results only in red soil, whereas in other four soils of China, it showed negative effect
Key words : Amendments, biochar, biomass, N use efficiency, soil fertility