Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2019
Authors
Idoia Biurrun Jürgen Dengler Sabina Burrascano Iwona Dembicz Itziar García-Mijangos Riccardo Guarino Jutta Kapfer Remigiusz Pielech Santiago Soliveres Manuel J. Steinbauer GrassPlot ConsortiumAbstract
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Scientists have found a beneficial fungus that functions as a bodyguard in strawberry plants. Experiments show that it protects against pests and seemingly also plant diseases – as well as increasing plant growth.
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Recent studies on using soil enhancer material, such as biochar, provide varying results from a soil hydrological and chemical perspective. Therefore, research focusing on soil-biochar-plant interactions is still necessary to enhance our knowledge on complex effects of biochar on soil characteristics. The present study investigated the changes in soil water content (SWC) and soil respiration (belowground CO2 production) over time during the growth of Capsicum annuum (pepper) in pot experiments. Concurrently, we investigated the influence of grain husk biochar with the amount of 0, 0.5%, 2.5%, and 5.0% (by weight) added to silt loam soil. Pepper plants were grown under natural environmental conditions to better represent field conditions, and additional irrigation was applied. SWC among treatments showed minor changes to precipitation during the beginning of the study while plants were in the growing phase. The highest water holding throughout the experiment was observed in the case of BC5.0. CO2 production increased in biochar amended soils during the first few days of the experiments; while the overall cumulative CO2 production was the highest in control and the lowest in BC2.5 treatments. We used the HYDRUS 1D soil hydrological model to simulate changes in SWC, using the control treatment without biochar as a reference data source for model calibration. The simulated SWC dynamics fitted well the measured ones in all treatments. Therefore, the HYDRUS 1D can be an exceptionally valuable tool to predict the hydrological response of different amount of biochar addition to silt loam soil including plant growth.
Authors
Daniel RasseAbstract
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At the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO, formerly Bioforsk), biochar has been a topic of research since 2009 through both laboratory and field studies. Initial results demonstrated that biochar produced from clean biomass is safe to use on agricultural soils, and that pyrolysis temperatures of ≥370 °C are necessary for producing biochar that is resistant to decomposition on a timescale of 100 years. Further work identified the chemical transformations that are responsible for biochar stability and contributed to finding the best indicator of this stability. Throughout the years, we have had close collaboration with industry and farmers in Norway, where now industrial networks are in action and there is financial support for the implementation of biochar technology. Despite the convincing benefits of biochar as a climate mitigation solution, it has only slowly advanced beyond the research stage, notably because its effect on yield are too modest. There is therefore a need for win-win biochar solutions benefiting both food production and climate mitigation. Such a solution is the development of biochar fertilizers, which capitalizes on the capacity of biochar to capture and release nutrients. As biochar properties largely depend on pyrolysis conditions and feedstock properties, our current work contributes to the selective design of biochars for the purpose of improving nutrient use efficiency.
Authors
Daniel RasseAbstract
No abstract has been registered