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Arid Land Geography ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (3): 890-900.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2021.402

• Biology and Pedology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Comprehensive evaluation of soil environmental factors under different mulching conditions in pear orchard in arid region

CAO Gang1(),BI Shuhai2,ZHAO Mingxin1,CAO Sufang1,WANG Wei1,NIU Jijun2,LI Hongxu1()   

  1. 1. Insitute of Fruit and Floriculture Research, Gansu Academy of Agricultural Science, Lanzhou 730070, Gansu, China
    2. Gansu Yasheng Industry Limited Liability Company, Lanzhou 730400, Gansu, China
  • Received:2021-09-10 Revised:2021-12-15 Online:2022-05-25 Published:2022-05-31
  • Contact: Hongxu LI E-mail:Caogang@gsagr.ac.cn;lihongxu8588@sina.com

Abstract:

This study investigated the effects of different mulching materials on the changes of soil physical and chemical properties and nutrient content during the entire growth period of pear orchard, at Jingtai County, Gansu Province, China, analyzing the relationship between soil temperature, moisture, pH, and mineral nutrients and comprehensively evaluating the soil. Four mulching treatments were used in this experiment: no mulching (T1), gardening cloth mulching (T2), maize straw mulching (T3), and black plastic mulching (T4). The randomized block design was adopted. Each treatment plot consisted of 167 pear trees (covering an area of about 667 m2), repeated for three times; soil samples of each plot were obtained from 0-20 cm, 20-40 cm, and 40-60 cm soil layers. The results showed that (1) the treatments of gardening cloth mulching and black plastic mulching had a certain warming effect. The gardening cloth mulching could reduce the content of soil organic matter and the total salt content of soil. The treatments of plastic mulching film could increase the surface soil pH and accelerate the decomposition of organic matter in the surface soil. Maize straw mulching had well temperature lowering and stabilizing effects, and the effect of soil moisture increasing was obvious. Meanwhile, compared with the other three treatments, its soil moisture content significantly increased by 1.0%-2.7%. (2) Compared with no mulching treatment, black film mulching could improve the pH and accelerate the decomposition of organic matter in topsoil, and the content of organic matter decreased by 33.1%. At the same time, maize straw mulching significantly reduced the pH of each soil layer with a reduction range of 1.8%-4.6% and promoted the increase of organic matter in 0-20 cm soil layer with increasing the content of soil organic matter by 12.2%. (3) The content of soil organic matter and total salt in 0-40 cm soil layer under gardening cloth mulching decreased. The contents of alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen in 0-20 and 20-40 cm soil layers under black plastic mulching were 73.00 mg·g-1 and 64.53 mg·g-1, respectively, which were significantly higher than those under no mulching treatment. Soil alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen accumulated more in the deep layer (40-60 cm soil layer) without mulching, which was significantly higher than that of maize straw and black plastic mulching. The content of available phosphorus in 0-20 and 20-40 cm soil layers of each treatment was observed to be significantly different, and the order from high to low was T4>T3>T2>T1. Furthermore, maize straw mulching could increase the availability of potassium and available iron in soil. (4) According to the comprehensive assessment by principal component analysis, the effects of different mulching methods on the environmental factors of shallow soil in pear orchard were significantly greater than those of deep soil, and the effects of each mulching treatment in the 0-40 cm soil layer were better than those without mulching treatment. The comprehensive scores of corn straw mulching in 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm soil layers were 1.189 and 0.326, respectively.

Key words: arid region, different mulching, soil quality, principal component analysis