Effects of pyrolysis temperature on soil-plant-microbe responses to Solidago canadensis L.-derived biochar in coastal saline-alkali soil
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Soil salinization and alkalization are typical factors restraining the improvement of land-use efficiency and development of agricultural production worldwide (Cho et al., 2018; Ivushkin et al., 2019; Sun et al., 2017a). It has been reported that over 25% of the total arable land worldwide has been adversely affected by salinization and alkalization in >100 countries (Xia et al., 2019). Coastal soils, in particular, exhibit high concentrations of exchangeable sodium, which consolidates soil, thereby resulting in poor soil structure and limiting water permeability. In addition, soil salinity reduces plant nutrient acquisition and transport, leading to nutrient imbalance (Cheng et al., 2019). Once coastal saline-alkali soils have been improved and treated, they could become important land resources for food production and afforestation. Therefore, improvement and utilization of coastal saline-alkali soils have attracted considerable attention.
Recently, biochar also has attracted considerable attention as a promising economical soil amendment. Compared with other soil amendments (El hasini et al., 2019; Nouri et al., 2017; Oo et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2018b; Xia et al., 2019), biochar could retain more nutrients, provide more carbon sources, and maintain more soil moisture owing to its large surface area and recalcitrant organic carbon content. It has been reported that biochar could enhance soil properties by balancing water content, improving air porosity, and retaining polyvalent cations, thereby replacing Na+ from exchange sites by providing Ca2+ in salt-affected soils (Saifullah et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2018). Moreover, biochar could function as habitat for many soil microorganisms, which could help improve soil health (Amini et al., 2016).
Pyrolysis temperature is one of the most important conditions affecting biochar properties and composition. Zhang et al. (2020b) found that pyrolysis temperature negatively affected biochar hydrogen and oxygen contents and H/C and O/C ratios while positively affecting aromaticity, pH, and electrical conductivity. Pariyar et al. (2020) also found that pyrolysis temperature highly influenced biochar physicochemical properties, surface morphology, and mineral composition. Chandra and Bhattacharya (2019) advised that optimal pyrolysis temperatures for rice-straw-derived biochars were in the range 500–600 °C to achieve high soil nutrient contents, ideal pH, and low volatile-organic-compound (VOC) contents. Meanwhile, biochars could carry contaminants consisting of hazardous elements (e.g., heavy metals (HMs) and metalloids) in feedstocks or unexpected carcinogenic by-products (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins) generated during pyrolysis; therefore, biochar toxicity is related to pyrolysis temperature (Hilber et al., 2017). Some studies concluded that biochar addition into soil posed risks of heavy metals or PAHs (Khan et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2019). Consequently, impact of intrinsic toxicity on living organisms must be considered when applying biochars to soils (Yang et al., 2019). According to properties of raw materials and biochar-treated soils, pyrolysis temperature must be selected carefully to ensure safety of soils to which biochars are applied.
However, few studies comprehensively have explored effects of pyrolysis temperature on actual ecological responses to biochar in coastal saline-alkali soils. The Lingang New Area, located on the coast of the East Sea, was selected as a sampling site. Most of the Lingang New Area was formed by land reclamation; therefore, soil there shows very high salinity, making it very difficult for plants to grow. Furthermore, much of the uncultivated land in the Lingang New Area has been overgrown with invasive species such as Solidago canadensis L., thereby greatly reducing abundance and diversity of native plant communities. Therefore, we prepared Solidago-canadensis-L.-derived biochar to improve salt-affected soil, to optimise biochar pyrolysis temperature and assess its impact on plant growth in coastal saline-alkali soil, to elucidate the mechanism by which pyrolysis temperature affects biochar soil application and determine the relationship between pyrolysis temperature and biochar soil eco-toxicity, and to improve resource utilization of invasive species so that they might be used as an effective, economical amendment for application to coastal saline-alkali soil.
Section snippets
Biochar preparation and characterisation
Solidago canadensis L. samples were collected from the Lingang New Area in Shanghai, China. The main composition of feedstock was measured and presented in Table A.1, including the content of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and basic element content, as well as pH value. The feedstock was slowly pyrolyzed in a vacuum tube furnace (GSL-1600, China) at 400, 450, 500, 550, and 600 °C, respectively. Pyrolyzed biochar powders were labelled SCB400, SCB450, SCB500, SCB550, and SCB600, respectively.
TG and DTG analyses of feedstock
Fundamental knowledge of feedstock thermal degradation is of great importance for optimising biochar pyrolysis temperature. TG and DTG curves obtained for Solidago canadensis L., presented in Fig. A.1, clearly show three stages of thermal decomposition. Owing to precipitation of free water, the first stage from 20 to 200 °C showed slight weight loss. The second stage, from 200 to 400 °C, showed one sharp peak centred in the range 250–320 °C in the DTG curve. Here, cellulose, hemicellulose, and
Conclusions
Solidago-canadensis-L.-derived biochar could effectively improve quality of coastal saline-alkali soil mainly by decreasing soil Ex-Na content, bulk density, and salt stress. Biochar also contributed to increasing soil water-holding capacity, organic-matter content, and nutrient availability. Selection of the appropriate pyrolysis temperature is necessary to improve effectiveness of biochar as a soil amendment. Ecological responses demonstrated that high-temperature biochar (pyrolyzed at or
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jiawen Tang: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft. Shudong Zhang: Investigation, Visualization. Xiaotong Zhang: Investigation, Visualization. Jinhuan Chen: Data curation, Validation. Xinyu He: Visualization, Writing - review & editing. Qiuzhuo Zhang: Supervision, Project administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2018YFC1901005]; Institute of Eco-Chongming [grant number ECNU-IEC-201901]; and Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology [grant numbers 17295810603, 17DZ1202804 and 18295810400]. The authors would like to thank them for funding this project.
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