Prof. Fahmy Mohamed Habiab Hassan :: Publications:

The current investigation was aimed at studying the effect of addition of, chicken manure (CM), rice straw charcoal (RSCH), sugar beet straw compost (SBC) and sugar lime (SL) " Ca-rich material resulting from referring beet sugar", to a calcareous sandy clay loam soil (from Maryut, Egypt) on availability of some plant nutrients and their uptake by barely plants. Soil collected from 0 - 15 cm soil surface was used in a pot experiment for this purpose. Plastic pots of 5 kg capacity were used. Organic materials were added and thoroughly mixed with the soil of each pot. The design was a randomized complete block, factorial (3 replicates) ; involving two factors (A: the kind of conditioner, B: the rate of addition). A treatment of no- conditioner application was also carried out. The rates were 2, 4, 8 % (w/w) "rates equivalent to 10, 20, and 40 metric tons / fed., on the basis of 30 cm soil depth under field conditions assuming 2 million ton / fed. of such depth). Pots were watered to maintain the soil moisture content at field capacity. Srx months after addition of organic materials 20 barley grains (Hordun vulgara cv. Giza. 123) per pot were sown. Barley seedlings (45 days of age) were cut and the dry weight was recorded and kept for determination of N, P , K , Fe , Zn and Mn. At end of experiment soil samples were taken for analysis of available N, P and K content. The main results showed the followings: 1-All organic materials increased availability of N, P and K in the soil as well as the dry matter yield of barley plants except for RSCh which decreased nutrient availability and barely dry matter yield. The positive effect of organic materials on dry matter yield may be due to increasing both soil content and availability of nutrients to plants. The negative effect of RSCh may be due to its low nutrients contents in comparison with the other added materials as well as its wide C/N ratio. 2 - All organic materials increased the uptake of N, P K, Fe, Mn, and Zn by plants except for RSCh which decreased their uptake, probably due to high salinity of RSCh. Uptake of these nutrients by barley plants followed a trend almost similar to that of the availability of macronutrients in soil, effects being also dependent on the kind and rate of applied conditioners. It could be concluded that addition of such organic materials to the calcareous soil had a favorable effect on increasing its content of available plant nutrients which in turn is reflected on increasing the yield of the growing plants. The effects of these materials depend on the kind and the rate of applied material. The most favorable effects occurred with SBC and CM, particularly when the rate was highest. Also, the utilization of these organic materials as a soil conditioners in the newly reclaimed soils or for conditioning the soils under reclamation decrease the environmental pollution.