Weed composition and cover after three years of soil fertility management in the central Brazilian Amazon: Composti, fertilizer, manure and charcoal applications
JULIE MAJOR,1 * CHRISTOPH STEINER,2 ANTONIO DITOMMASO,1 NEWTON P.S. FALCÃO 3 and JOHANNES LEHMANN 1
Abstract
Soils of the lowland tropics in the central Brazilian Amazon are generally highly leached, acidic and nutrient-poor. Charcoal, combined with other soil amendments, might improve fertility but this, in turn, could lead to increased weed problems for agricultural production. This experiment was conducted to assess weed pressure and species composition on plots receiving various inorganic and organic soil amendments, including charcoal. Additions of inorganic fertilizer, compost and chicken manure resulted in increases in weed ground cover of 40, 22 and 53%, respectively, and increases in species richness of 20, 48, and 63%, respectively. When chicken manure was applied, dominance by a few weed species was reduced, such that different species were more evenly represented. Although charcoal additions alone did not significantly affect weed ground cover or species richness, a synergistic effect occurred when both charcoal and inorganic fertilizers were applied. The percentage ground cover of weeds was 45% within plots receiving inorganic fertilizer, 2% within plots receiving charcoal and 66% within plots receiving both amendments. Improvements in the fertility of nutrient-poor soils of the tropics might increase weed pressure and make the development of effective weed management strategies more critical. These effects on weed populations were observed nearly 2.5 years after the addition of charcoal, chicken manure and compost, and >1 year after the last
application of inorganic fertilizer.
Keywords:charcoal, organic amendments, soil fertility, weeds.
1Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Bradfield Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA,
2Institute of Soil Science,University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany and
3 Coordenação de Pesquisas em Ciências Agronômicas, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
Weed Biology and Management 5, 69–76 (2005)