Journal of Agronomy and Field Innovations

Background: Soil respiration is one of the major components of the terrestrial carbon cycle, as it shows the general contribution of the roots and the activity of heterotrophic microorganisms; this process is responsible for carbon accumulation and release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon mineralization, which entails the utilization of organic materials by microorganisms, regulates both access of nutrients and capacity for accumulation of soil organic carbon. It is suggested that organic farming changes these processes in comparison to conventional practices, but a limited amount of research findings exist.
Objective: The goal of this paper is to analyze the soil respiration dynamics and carbon mineralization rates in organic farming, concerning conventional agricultural practices.
Method: Randomized complete block field study comparison of the four treatments, farmyard manure, vermicompost, green manure, and biochar, with unamended and conventional fertilization was carried out over a year, with the help of the alkali absorption method for measuring soil respiration, laboratory incubation for measuring carbon mineralization, and chloroform fumigation-extraction for determining microbial biomass carbon and with subsequent determination of total SOC, enzyme activity, moisture content, and soil bulk density analyzed through ANOVA.
Result: Treatment with organic fertilizers turned out to be useful in terms of soil respiration and carbon conversion in comparison with no treatment and traditional fertilization. The best result in respiration was achieved for vermicompost (1.93 mg CO2-C/kg/hour), and the best treatment for SOC was biochar (16.3 grammatical). Microbial biomass carbon and dehydrogenase activity correlated with the rate of carbon transformation (r > 0.80, p < 0.01), and PCA showed that organic fertilizers treated plots have distinct features in terms of biological processes.
Conclusion: Organic fertilizers provide favorable conditions for biological carbon cycling in soils while storing carbon, which shows that the application of the right kind of organic fertilizers may lead to the balancing of the process of carbon release with carbon sequestration.