Impact of Microwave Soil Heating on the Yield and Nutritive Value of Rice Crop

Muhammad Jamal Khan, Graham Brodie, Long Cheng, Wenwen Liu and Ravneet Jhajj
Additional contact information
Muhammad Jamal Khan: School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3647, Australia
Graham Brodie: School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3647, Australia
Long Cheng: School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3647, Australia
Wenwen Liu: School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3647, Australia
Ravneet Jhajj: School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3647, Australia

Agriculture, 2019, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-7

Abstract: Microwave (MW) soil heating has been shown to deplete the soil weed seedbank and increase crop productivity. However, the impact of MW soil heating on the nutritive value of crops is unknown. In this study, two field trials were conducted to evaluate the effect of pre-sowing MW soil treatment with a duration of 60 s and an untreated control, which were assigned in a randomized complete block design with five replicates at two locations, on the yield and nitrogen (N) accumulation pattern of rice crops. At Jerilderie site, soil heating at up to 70–75 °C significantly ( p ˂ 0.09) increased the rice biomass yield by 43.03% compared with rice biomass yield in untreated soils, while at Dookie site no significant increase in biomass yield was detected. Dry matter digestibility (DMD), ash, and N% did not change, whereas the N accumulation in dry biomass was significantly ( p ˂ 0.09) higher at both sites (8.2% at Dookie and 43.4% at Jerilderie) and N use efficiency (10–40%) increased in response to MW soil treatment. The current study suggests that MW soil treatment can potentially enhance the crop productivity and N accumulation in dry biomass under field conditions. Future research is needed to understand the impact of MW soil heating on the productivity and nutritive value of different fodder crops under field conditions.

Keywords: new technology; soil temperature; crop growth; forage quality; sustainable food production (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: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/7/134/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/7/134/ (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:9:y:2019:i:7:p:134-:d:243527

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 ().