Wheat Crop Yield and Changes in Soil Biological and Heavy Metals Status in a Sandy Soil Amended with Biochar and Irrigated with Drainage Water

Mohieyeddin M. Abd El-Azeim, Ahmad M. Menesi, Mahmoud M. Abd El-Mageed, Joanna Lemanowicz and Samir A. Haddad ()
Additional contact information
Mohieyeddin M. Abd El-Azeim: Soil Science Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Minia University, El-Minia 61519, Egypt
Ahmad M. Menesi: Soil Science Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Minia University, El-Minia 61519, Egypt
Mahmoud M. Abd El-Mageed: Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Minia University, El-Minia 61519, Egypt
Joanna Lemanowicz: Department of Biogeochemistry and Soil Science, Bydgoszcz University of Science and Technology, 85-029 Bydgoszcz, Poland
Samir A. Haddad: Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Minia University, El-Minia 61517, Egypt

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: The current research aims to study the impacts of adding corncob biochar to a sandy soil irrigated with drainage water on wheat productivity, heavy metals fate, and some soil properties that reflect healthy soil conditions. This research consists of two separate experiments under field (lysimeters) and pot incubation conditions conducted on sandy soil irrigated with drainage water and treated with corncob biochar at the rate of 0.0, 1, 2, and 3% as mixing or mulching. Results specified that drainage water electrical conductivity value (5.89 dS m −1 ) lies under the degree of restriction on use of “Severe”, indicating that nonstop irrigation with such drainage water may cause a severe salinity problem in soil in the long run. A comparison of heavy metal concentrations of biochar-treated soils with the control showed that total heavy metals had accumulated significantly in the topsoil layer. Most of the available heavy metal concentrations in all soil leachate fractions were below the method detection limits. Mean concentrations of Ni, Cd, and Pb in wheat crops were far below the concentrations considered phytotoxic to wheat plants. More than 90% of the Ni, Cd, and Pb contained in the drainage water of the Al-Moheet drain were significantly present ( p ≤ 0.05) and adsorbed by biochar in the top 20 cm of soil lysimeters, indicating the high biochar adsorptive capacity of heavy metals. Total counts of bacteria and fungi gradually and significantly increased over the soil incubation time despite irrigation with contaminated drainage water. Soil resistance index (SRI) values for microbial biomass were positive throughout the experiment and increased significantly as the application rate of corncob biochar increased. These results indicated the high feasibility of using corncob biochar at a rate of 3% to temporarily improve the health of sandy soil despite irrigation with drainage water.

Keywords: soil properties; wheat productivity; corncob biochar; drainage water; microbial biomass (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/10/1723/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/10/1723/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:10:p:1723-:d:946911

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().