Effect of wood ash and crushed rock soil amendments on red clover growth and dinitrogen fixation

Autor: A Sigrun Dahlin, Maria Stenberg
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Agricultural and Food Science, Vol 26, Iss 4 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1459-6067
1795-1895
DOI: 10.23986/afsci.63739
Popis: The fertiliser effect of adding wood ash or crushed rock to a low-fertility soil, compared with an unamended control, was assessed in a pot experiment with a perennial ryegrass-red clover mixture. Dinitrogen (N2) fixation by the clover and translocation of fixed N to the grass were determined using 15N natural abundance. The wood ash produced the highest accumulated clover biomass over two cuts, followed by the crushed rock. Chemical analyses suggested that the increase was due to K supply by the amendments. The wood ash also led to larger amounts of fixed N compared with the control. However, N2 fixation was not increased as much as biomass amount, leading to dilution of plant N. There were minor or no treatment effects on mineralisation from soil N pools. This indicates that good-quality wood ash can be successfully used as a multi-element soil amendment to enhance clover growth on low-fertility soils.
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