| Biochar is a kind of material produced by thermal decomposition of organic materials in anaerobic or anoxic conditions. In recent years, biochar has been drawing increasingly attentionboth at home and abroad as an important soil amendment, carbon sequestration agent and controlled-release carriers to fertilizer. In order to promotethe utilization of biochar in agriculture and prove suitable biochar content in Guanzhong Plainarea, and provide a theory basis for the biochar effective utilization in agricultural production, a field experimentwas conducted to study the effects of biochar application on crop growth, yield and soil physical and chemical properties in manural loessial soil of Guanzhong Plain area, Shaanxi Province, PR China. The experimentwas carried out in the randomly arranged blocks, with 5 treatments and 3 replications. The experimental treatments included 4 levels of biochar: no biochar(CK), 1 000 kg?hm-2(T1), 5 000 kg?hm-2(T2), 10 000 kg?hm-2(T3). Plant and soil samples were sampled at regular intervals during maize and wheat growing season(seedling/ tillering stage, jointing stage, heading stage, grain filling stage and maturing stage). The objective of the present study was to investigate the the effect of biochar on crop growth and soil physical and chemical properties, and explain the suitable amount of biochar applation at Guanzhong Plain.The results showed that all biochar application treatments significantly promotedgrain yield of summer maize and winter wheat. For summer maize,the T1 treatment had the highest grain yield in different treatments, and it was 8.8% higher than that of CK. While the highest yield of wheat is T2, it was 9.9% higher than CK. For summer maize, the kernel per spike of T3 was significantly higher than those of T1 and CK, however, the grain weight of T1 was significantly higher than that of T3 and CK. The spike number, kernel per spike and thousand kernel weight of wheat had no significant differences between treatments. The application of biochar notably affected the LAI, net photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll of leaves and the accumulation of shoot biomass. Especially, T2 and T3 could notably increase the shoot biomass of both wheat and summer maize. The higher biochar had higher LAI and net photosynthetic rate of leaves than the less biochar application at early growth stage. However, leaves in the less biochar level had photosynthesis for more days as compared with higher biochar levels at later growth stage of summer maize, and the higher biochar level treatment resulted premature senility, while, this phenomenon was not obvious at the later growth stage of wheat.Boichar has no significant influence on soil moisture content. Under the low level of water capacity of the field, moderate boichar could improve the soil moisture content, the water condition of the field was appropriate, biochar treatments would lead to a decline of the soil moisture content.Biochar could obviously improve the soil nutrient status. Compared with CK, biochar treatments could improve the organic matter content of soil. Higher boichar treatments(T2, T3) could significantly improve the level of available nitrogen content in arable layer soil of summer maize, but a lower biochar application(T1) was more beneficial to improve the available nitrogen content in wheat. Compared with CK, T2 treatment was likely to improve the available phosphorus content in wheat, but for summer maize, biochar application had no significant effect on the available phosphorus content. Biochar applications were beneficial to improve available potassium content in both summer maize and wheat growing season. For summer maize, T2 was better in all treatments, but for wheat, soil available potassium content increased with the increase of biochar usage. |
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