Abstract
Knowledge of long-term phosphorus (P) behavior is essential to improve soil structure, nutrient supply potential and environmental sustainability of cropping systems. A 35-year (1984–2019) long-term experiment under winter wheat-broomcorn millet and pea (W + M/P) was undertaken to investigate soil aggregation and aggregate associated P fractions using Hedley sequential fractionation method in the 60 cm soil profile of Northwest China. Treatments included (1) unfertilized control (CK), P fertilizer (P), N combined with P (NP), and NP plus farmyard manure (NPM). A settling tube apparatus was used to fractionate the soils physically into four sizes (> 250–, 125–250–, 63–125–, and < 63 µm) aggregates. Results indicated long-term P fertilization regimes had no striking effects on promoting the size distribution of aggregates except for > 250 µm in the 0–60 soil depths, where NPM treatment significantly increased the mass proportion by 50.7% at 0–20 cm, 78.8% at 20–40 cm, and 36.1% at 40–60 cm depths over CK, respectively. Compared with CK, long-term P fertilization markedly raised aggregate associated P fraction at 0–60 cm soil depths. In particular, the average labile P in all size aggregates increased by 93%, 63%, and 170%, moderately labile P by 117%, 118%, and 127%, and non-labile P by 324%, 268%, and 345%, respectively, under the P, NP, and NPM treatment that contributed higher in large (> 250 μm) size aggregate than others. Our results suggested that long-term P fertilization, especially mineral P combined with farmyard manure better sustains soil structural stability and promotes soil P transformation and availability in soil aggregates in the soil profile, which would have environmental consequences. Therefore, P management needs to modify based on monitoring soil nutrients and P fractions over time.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The contributions of Xihui Wu, Sheng Gao, and Wang Rui in field soil sampling are gratefully acknowledged. We particularly appreciate the generous support of Prof. Shulan Zhang and Yang Xueyun for providing valuable support during the determination of the phosphorus fractions scheme and soil properties.
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This work was supported by the “The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2021FY100502)” and “The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2452019186).”
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Asif Khan: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, visualization, writing–original draft, writing–review & editing. Shengli Guo: conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, conceptualization, supervision, resources, project administration, validation, writing – review & editing. Wang Rui: Investigation, writing–review & editing. He Binghui: writing–review & editing. tianyang li: writing–review & editing. Umer Mahmood: software.
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Khan, A., Guo, S., Rui, W. et al. The Impact of Long-term Phosphorus Fertilization on Soil Aggregation and Aggregate-Associated P Fractions in Wheat-Broomcorn Millet/Pea Cropping Systems. J Soil Sci Plant Nutr 23, 2755–2769 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01232-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01232-4