Intercropping of Stylosanthes green manure could improve the organic nitrogen fractions in a coconut plantation with acid soil

Dongfen Huang; Xulin Liu; Hengfu Huan; Guodao Liu; An Hu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0277944

Intercropping of Stylosanthes green manure could improve the organic nitrogen fractions in a coconut plantation with acid soil

PLoS One. 2023 Mar 10;18(3):e0277944. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277944. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Dongfen Huang¹, Xulin Liu², Hengfu Huan¹, Guodao Liu¹, An Hu¹

Affiliations

¹ Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATAS) / Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Resources and Germplasm Enhancement in Southern China, Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, Haikou, Hainan, P.R. China.
² College of Agronomy, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University, Daqing, Heilingjiang, P.R. China.

Abstract

Intercropping green manure (GM) may be a good solution to the problems of acid soil in tropical plantations. Soil organic nitrogen (No) may change due to the application of GM. A three-year field experiment was conducted to determine the effect of different utilization patterns of Stylosanthes guianensis GM on soil No fractions in a coconut plantation. Three treatments were set: no GM intercropping (CK), intercropping and mulching utilization pattern (MUP), and intercropping and green manuring utilization pattern (GMUP). The content dynamics of soil total N (TN) and soil No fractions including of non-hydrolysable N (NHNo) and hydrolyzable N (HN) in the cultivated soil layer was examined. The results showed that after three years of intercropping, the TN content of the MUP and GMUP treatment was 29.4% and 58.1% respectively higher (P < 0.05) than those of the initial soil, and the No fractions content of GMUP and MUP treatment was 15.1%-60.0% and 32.7%-111.0% higher (P < 0.05) than those of the initial soil. The further results indicated that after three years of intercropping, compared with CK, GMUP and MUP could increase the content of TN by 32.6% and 61.7% respectively, and No fractions content was also increased by 15.2%-67.3% and 32.3%-120.3%% respectively (P < 0.05). The No fractions content of GMUP treatment was 10.3%-36.0% higher than those of MUP treatment (P < 0.05). These results indicated that intercropping Stylosanthes guianensis GM could significantly increase the soil N including of the TN an No fractions content, and the GMUP was more effective than MUP, therefore, GMUP is a better GM utilization pattern to improve the soil fertility and should be popularized in the tropical fruit plantation.

Copyright: © 2023 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture / methods
China
Cocos
Fabaceae*
Fertilizers
Manure
Nitrogen / analysis
Soil*

Substances

Soil
Nitrogen
Manure
Fertilizers

Grants and funding

For the financial supports, this research was funded by the following funders: 1.Natural Science Foundation of Hainan Province (No. 2019CXTD415), which took the role in study design of the manuscript. 2. Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (CARS-22), which took the role in study design of the manuscript, data collection and analysis of the manuscript. 3. Fundamental Scientific Research Funds for Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute (CATAS No. 1630032017032 and 1630032022029), which took the role in data collection and analysis of the manuscript.