Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from farmland is an important strategy for countries around the world to ensure food security and respond to global warming.

The red soil areas in China are important for grain and oil production, but the problems of acidification and magnesium deficiency are serious. Biochar is widely used as a soil conditioner for red soil improvement. However, due to the differences in the properties of biochar types, its improvement effect and greenhouse gas impact are controversial.

Based on the long-term field experiment located at Qiyang Red Soil Station, a recent study found that pristine and Mg-modified rice-straw biochar (RBC and MRBC) could improve soil pH, soil nutrient content and enzyme activities (catalase, invertase, urease) and increase bacterial levels (mainly of Gram-negative bacteria and actinomycetes) and those of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) biomass while decreasing fungi biomass.

Compared with the RBC, MRBC can reduce the leaching of NO3ˉ and PO4ˉ due to its larger surface area, adsorb NO3ˉand NH4+, which would not be further available for microbes to decompose and cause N2O emissions, and also reduce the cumulative CO2 emissions.

The study results are titled "The impact of pristine and modified rice straw biochar on the emission of greenhouse gases from a red acidic soil" and were published in the JCR Environmental Science Quality 1 journal "Environmental Research" (2020 Impact Factor: 6.498). Muhammad Numan Khan, a Pakistani doctoral student at the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning (IARRP), CAAS, is the first author, and professor Zhang Huimin is the corresponding author.

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key R&D Program, and the Central Public Welfare Special Project.

Paper link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1eP-i3Ao5-oYW