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Organic materials with high C/N ratio: more beneficial to soil improvement and soil health

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Abstract

In order to figure out the effect of organic fertilizers with different carbon–nitrogen (C/N) ratios on the soil improvement and the healthy cultivation, the pot experiment method was used to study effects on the physical and chemical properties and the bacterial community structure of sandy loam soil using five treatments of chemical fertilizer application with the C/N ratios of 15 (CN15), 20 (CN20), 25 (CN25), 30 (CN30) and the control (CK) respectively. Results show that the organic materials with different C/N ratios significantly improve the soil porosity and water content, which all show a linear change rule with the C/N ratio. It can also significantly increase the soil total carbon, total nitrogen, soil C/N ratio, soil microbial biomass carbon, microbial biomass nitrogen and microbial biomass C/N ratio. Among them, CN30 significantly increases the soil total carbon and C/N ratio, which are 5.34–24.13% and 8.87–30.15% respectively compared with other treatments. It can be also found that the dominant flora (at the phylum level) of each treatment are Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Chlorobi. The CN30 treatment presents the most obvious improvement in the diversity and richness of the soil bacterial community and is more conducive to the growth and reproduction of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. The correlation analysis shows that Ctotal/Ntotal and Cmic/Nmic are the most important environmental factors affecting the soil physical and chemical properties and their correlation with the bacterial communities. The higher C/N ratio of organic materials results in a more significant improvement of the soil physical and chemical properties. This study provides a new theoretical basis for the soil health cultivation technology.

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Funding

The authors would also like to thank Key research and development projects of Henan Province (Grant No. 222102110178), Shanghai Tobacco Group Science and Technology Project (2022310000140536), Key scientific and technological project of Hanzhong Tobacco Company (2021HZ05), Key Science and Technology Project of Shanxi Tobacco Company (2021611000270042), Henan young backbone teachers funding project (2020GGJS0470).

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Author notes

  1. Jiayi Li and Tianbao Ren are co-first authors and contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Tobacco, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Qingdao, 266000, China

    Jiayi Li & Haobao Liu

  2. Tobacco College of Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    Tianbao Ren, Nan Chen, Quanyu Yin, Maosen Li & Guoshun Liu

  3. Henan Biochar Technology Engineering Laboratory/Henan Biochar Engineering Research Center, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    Jiayi Li, Tianbao Ren & Guoshun Liu

  4. Greatwall Cigar Factory of China Tobacco, Sichuan Industrial Co., Ltd, Shifang, 618400, Sichuan, China

    Yasen Li

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  1. Jiayi Li
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Li, J., Ren, T., Li, Y. et al. Organic materials with high C/N ratio: more beneficial to soil improvement and soil health. Biotechnol Lett 44, 1415–1429 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-022-03309-z

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