Biochar has been considered as a useful amendment to increase soil microbial activities, but it is still vague on effects of microbial community after biochar incorporation. This study aims to incorporate a wood biochar (WB), pyrolized at 400°C, into a highly weathered slopeland soil with a gradient of 5o to evaluate the changes of microbial community after 1 year in-situ incubation. Field trials were conducted in 7 treatments including control (O), biochar (2% and 4%, w/w) (WB2; WB4), compost (1%) (C), compost (1%) + biochar (2% and 4%) (CWB2; CWB4) and polyacrylamide in 50 ppm (PAM) in this study. Soil microbial communities were measured by using next generation sequencing (NGS) technique in this study. Our NGS analytical results indicated that the majority of sequences from CWB treatments were assigned to species Anaerolinea thermolimosa, Caldithrix palaeochoryensis, Chthoniobacter flavus, and Cohnella soli. In addition, canonical-correlation analysis (CCA) shown that the microbial community structure was obviously determined by the order of soil factors as follows: inorganic N (IN), available P (AP), pH, soil organic C (SOC), porosity and bulk density (Bd) and aggregate stability. The treatments with co-application of compost and biochar (CWB2 and CWB4) facilitate the domination of Caldithrix palaeochoryensis, Chthoniobacter flavus, and Cohnella soli which help decomposition of organic matter and oxidation of ammonia in the soil. Apparent increase of IN, AP, porosity and SOC resulted from biochar and compost might be the critical reason to induce the change of soil microbial community. Additional, co-application of compost and biochar are also considered as a suitable strategy for biochar incorporation in the rural soil.

Effects of in-situ biochar incorporation on microbial community in a highly weathered soil

254th National Meeting (2017)

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