Effect of biochar on mineral nitrogen content in soils with different pH values

Abstract: Biochar is the charred byproduct of biomass pyrolysis, the heating of plant-derived material in the absence of oxygen in order to capture combustible gases. Key chemical and physical properties of biochar are greatly affected both by the choice of feedstock (crop waste, energy crop, etc.) and the process conditions (mainly temperature and time). The effect of temperature on biochar properties shows that biochar created at low temperature may be suitable for controlling the release of nutrients, whilst high temperature biochars may be more suitable for use as activated carbon. The other key aspect of biochar is related to carbon sequestration and improvement of soil productivity. Soils amended with biochar in many centuries ago by pre-Colombian peoples in the Amazon Basin still retain higher plant-available nutrients than the adjacent unamended soils. Additions of biochar to soil have shown definite increases in the availability of major cations and phosphorus as well as total nitrogen concentration. The causes for high fertility of these soils are multiple, but the source of the large amounts of organic matter and their high nutrient retention has been attributed to the extraordinarily high proportions of black carbon. Besides, the high available nitrogen (N) is from both direct nutrient addition by the biochar and greater nutrient retention. It is also reported biochar can influence soil N concentrations via affecting soil process, such as N transformation. However, it remains largely unknown how biochar affect N transformations.In this study, biochars were produced at 350°C (BC350) and 700°C (BC700) by using Miscanthus giganteus, and applied with and without ryegrass into soils with low (pH = 3.8) and high pH values (pH = 7.6) incubated for 180 days. Our results showed that the addition of biochar to soils had an average increase of total N content of 22% and 17%, respectively in acid and alkaline soils. Biochars had obvious effect on NH4+-N in acid soil. After 87 days of incubation, NH4+-N was declined to very low concentration. BC350 had a slight increase of NO3--N in acid soil. Compared with BC350, soils with BC700 significantly (p<0.05) decreased the concentration of NO3--N. For BC700, NO3--N in acid soil declined from 96.23 mg/kg to 4.39 mg/kg. Results also showed that biochars had high adsorption on NH4+-N. but no NO3--N was adsorpted, showing different impact of biochar on NH4+-N and NO3--N. This can partly explain why NH4+-N was not detected within all biochar addition treatments while NO3--N differed between soils and biochar. In addition, the increased soil microbial biomass via pH changes and better micro-environment, which affect biochar N transformation, thus possibly benefit N use of plant. No significant difference (p>0.05) was observed in treatments with and without ryegrass, neither between day 87 and 180, suggesting mineralization was largely occurred at the early incubation time in the soil with biochar added. The effects of biochar on the form and content of soil mineral nitrogen were closely related to the biochar's abilities including ammonium adsorption, enhancing soil pH value, enhancing ammonia volatilization, and microbial biomass nitrogen formation. In the practical application, using biochar as coating materials in producing the slow-release fertilizer to improve nitrogen use efficiency seems to be very promised, and more research is needed in this area in the near future.