Rhizosphere effect on soil organic matter decomposition

  • Weixin Cheng
  • David C. Coleman
Part of the Beltsville Symposia in Agricultural Research book series (BSAR, volume 14)

Abstract

In our study, 14C-labelled rye straw was incubated in fertilized or unfertilized soil with or without plants for 49 days under semi-controlled conditions. The soil was a well-drained sandy clay loam (66% sand, 13% silt, 21% clay). Carbon-14 labelled rye straw was produced from pulse labelling in plastic chambers. The respired 14CO2 was trapped in 1 M NaOH solution and counted by a liquid scintillation counter. Total and 14C microbial biomass-C in the soil were measured using the fumigation-incubation method of Jenkinson and Powlson (1976) taking Kc = 0.4. Radioactivity of shoots, roots and soils was determined by the dry combustion method using an OX-300 Biological Oxidizer. Our objective was to study the rhizosphere effect on soil organic matter mineralization under different soil mineral nutrient conditions.

Key words

carbon-14 decomposition rhizosphere 

References

  1. Jenkinson D S and Powlson D S 1976 Soil Biol. Biochem. 8, 167–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Reid J B and Goss M J 1982 J. Soil Sci. 33, 387–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Sallih Z and Bottner P 1988 Biol. Fertil. Soils 7, 67–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Sparling G V et al. 1982 J. Soil Sci. 33, 89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1991

Authors and Affiliations

  • Weixin Cheng
    • 1
  • David C. Coleman
    • 1
  1. 1.Institute of EcologyUniversity of GeorgiaAthensUSA

Personalised recommendations