Impact of biochar on the water holding capacity and moisture of basalt and grey soil

Abstract

Climate change has been threatening the sustainable development of the agricultural sector around the globe. It is a main reason of prolonged drought which gives negative effects on productivity and quality of agricultural products. For solving these emerging challenges, there have been many solutions on improving soil health in order to increase the tolerance of soil and plant to adverse weather conditions. Recent researches on biochar show that this is a good soil amendment because of its water holding capacity, nutrient retention, increased porosity and enhanced soil microbial activity. This study investigated the effect of biochar from rice husk and coffee husk produced by gasifier on the ability to retain water and moisture in basalt and grey soil, which collected from farming areas in Vietnam. The result illustrates that water holding capacity and soil moisture depend significantly on each type of biochar and applied dosage as well as characteristic of soil. Accordingly, when adding 1% biochar by mass to the grey soil (initial moisture content of 13%) helped increase the efficiency of water holding capacity by 26-33% corresponding to coffee husk or rice husk biochar. It is different from basalt soil (initial moisture content of 27%) when adding 1% rice husk biochar will impact on water retention efficiency was 7%, equivalent to 3% biochar from coffee husk. Therefore, biochar can be introduced as a soil conditioner effectively in dry soil or enhance the water retention in fertile soil that eventually contributed to the sustainable agriculture.