R.M. Gentilea
B. Vanlauweb c J. Sixa d. Integrated Soil Fertility Management: Aggregate carbon and nitrogen stabilization in differently textured tropical soils.Soil Biology and BiochemistryVolume 67 December 2013 Pages 124–132
Abstract
Soil organic matter is important to improve and sustain soil fertility in tropical agroecosystems. The combined use of organic residue and fertilizer inputs is advocated for its positive effects on short-term nutrient supply but the effect of the integrated use on long-term stabilization of soil organic C and N is still unclear. We conducted a 1.5-y soil incubation experiment with maize (Zea mays) residue and urea fertilizer to examine the stabilization of C and N in four Sub-Saharan African soils differing in texture (sand sandy loam clay loam and clay). The inputs were enriched with 13C and 15N in a mirror-labelling design to trace the fate of residue-C and N and fertilizer-N in combination. We hypothesized that combining inputs would enhance the stabilization of C and N relative to either input alone across a range of soil textures. The treatments were destructively sampled after 0.25 0.5 and 1.5 y to assess input-derived C and N stabilization in soil macro- and microaggregate fractions. The combination treatment had a significant but small (2% of residue-applied C) increase in residue-C stabilized in the total soil after 0.25 y but this increase did not persist after 0.5 and 1.5 y. While combining residue and fertilizer decreased the amount of residue-N stabilized within 53- to 2000-μm sized soil aggregates (e.g. 7%