Nutrients

Field Trials;
 I am field testing for the 09 corn season with JMU and consultation  Dr. Hepperly at Rodale Institute.

Ten research priorities were identified at the IBI conference, The following priorities I hope to address:
• 1- Economy research/market research
• 2- plant+soil research depending on biochar
• 5- field trials
• 8- application to soil (depending on agricultural or other
systems/remediation`)

Planting date: June 24th.
Two split plots , which each are split into a 20% (27 tons/Ac) & 5% (7 tons/Ac) application rates,
All chars soaked in tarps for 1 month, all chars were mixed 1:2 by volume with finished poultry litter compost and roto-tilled to 5 inch depth.

3 treatment groups with 3 replications
Char+ Compost
Char+ Compost + soluble NPK (soaked in char)
MYC+Char+Compost ("Dr. Mike's" Mycorrhiza corn inoculent)
Charcoal #1: Alterna Energy Biocarbon
Charcoal #2: Cowboy Hardwood Lump Charcoal

Soil Testing:
Dr. Mike Amaranthus of Mycorrhiza Applications ( http://www.mycorrhiza.com/ ) has  supplied his granular corn MYC , applied at planting, and lab support for harvest root analysis.
Dr. Kristine Nicoles of ARS, their head glomalin researcher, will also run soil test at Harvest
Lynn Rogers of Microbial Matrix will be testing for functional microbe groups

Total wet weight of corn biomass will be collected for each treatment group.

Much Thanks to:

 James Madison University / I.S.A.T., Dr. Wayne Teal - for providing a student for work and help in publication.

Local farmers Keith Sheetz and Andy & Jack Dixon

Dr. Paul Hepperly of Rodale Institude in PA. for consultations and his sister study in cow-peas.

Special thanks to Ecotechnologies Group for funding both of our studies.  http://www.ecotechnologies.com/index.html

The soil carbon bond can lead to an integration of organic and commercial agriculture practices. Biochar is a tool for both, for organic to increase its already-sustainable credentials, for chemical agriculture to at least halt soil carbon mining and seriously reduce nutrient runoff. The carbon sequestration bond can lead to a marriage of the best practices from both systems of agriculture to build soil into a biologically vital synergistic organism.

I hope to demonstrate this in my field trials with Roundup-ready corn, with the consultation of the Rodale Institute. Soil test for the full spectrum of food web organisms should ferret out the affinity of BioChar with these organisms in the context of standard chemical agricultural practices, and at Rodale with organic practice.

Erich J. Knight
Eco Technologies Group Technical Adviser
University of California Riverside advisory board member
Shenandoah Gardens (Owner)
1047 Dave Barry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA. 22840
540 289 9750

Sewage Sludge and The HEAP Trap
Folke Gunther, April 12, 2008

I was refraining from this, since I don’t think it is an item really belonging to the TP list, but now we are here.

1. Urine and faeces are excellent plant food. The reason we don’t use them directly is mostly cultural for the urine, I guess, but for faeces it is really an adaptive behaviour. Burning or charring cold be a good idea for faeces. The charring might make it sterile, and the non-gaseous nutrients, as phosphorus, would be returned to land, for a future production of new food. A large pat of the faeces is indigestible cellulose, why it could be a good thing to char it. The urine, which normally is sterile at the production site, could enrich charcoal very well.

2. Currently, the westernized wastewater behaviour is base on the MIFSLA (Mix First and Separate Later) philosophy This results in a mixture of high nutrient – high pathogen – high toxic – high water content mixture that is almost impossible to do something sensible with. Commonly, it is thrown away into the nearest lake or sea, where the harm it does is not immediately evident. On the other hand, avoiding the MIFSLA with a source-separating toilet is really easy, if you don’t live on the 21st floor and is forced to use the system, either you want it or not.

3. Living in dense communities (e.g. towns or cities) put another invisible restriction on you: As you use the MIFSLA system, you put the used nutrients on a smaller area than the food production area. It is like filling a glass of beer, when the glass is full, he leakage will equal the import. Normally, you stop the beer-filling process then, but you can not stop eating. It will end up in a steady state, which I call the HEAP trap.
I will add a ppt, trying to explain the HEAP effect and its cultural background.

YS
FG

Folke Günther
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund, Sweden
home/office: +46 46 14 14 29
cell: 0709 710306 skype: folkegun
Homepage:
blog: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/
folke@holon.se

Phosphorus Speciation in Manure and Manure-Amended Soils Using XANES Spectroscopy
S. Sato, D. Solomon, C. Hyland, Q.M. Ketterings, and J. Lehmann, NSLS Science Highlights, February 9, 2006

Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
It is important to know what inorganic phosphorus (P) species are being formed in soils subjected to high, long-term poultry-manure application in order to understand P accumulation and release patterns. Phosphorus K-edge XANES spectra of fresh manure showed no evidence of crystalline P minerals, but did exhibit a dominance of soluble calcium phosphates (CaP) and free and weakly bound phosphates. Soils with a short-term manure history contained both Fe-associated phosphates and soluble CaP. Long-term application resulted in a dominance of CaP and a transformation from soluble to more stable CaP species. However, none of the amended soils showed the presence of crystalline CaP. Maintaining a high pH is therefore an important strategy that can be used to minimize P leaching in these soils.

Knowing when plants capture phosphorus
Luis Pons, USDA Agricultural Research, Jan, 2003
ARS research into how and when plants use the phosphorus in manure may aid farmers as they try to stem nutrient runoff into waterways.
"A future challenge," says soil scientist Thomas J. Sauer, "will be not only to avoid over-application of phosphorus to soil, but also to ensure that in doing so a farmer does not make the land phosphorus deficient."
Sauer and soil scientist John L. Kovar focus on phosphorus as they study nutrient management of animal manure at ARS' National Soil Tilth Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
This research is part of Water and Quality Management, an ARS National Program (#201) described on the World Wide Web at http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Thomas J. Sauer and John L. Kovar are with the USDA-ARS National Soil Tilth Laboratory, 2150 Pammel Drive, Ames, IA 50011-4420; phone (515)294-3416 [Sauer], (515)294-3419 [Kovar], fax (515) 294-8125, e-mail sauer@nstl.gov.kovar@nstl.gov.

POTENTIAL FOR PYROLYSIS CHAR TO AFFECT SOIL MOISTURE AND NUTRIENT STATUS OF A LOAMY SAND SOIL
J.W. Gaskin, Adam Speir, L.M. Morris, Lee Ogden, Keith Harris, D. Lee, and K.C Das, Proceedings of the 2007 Georgia Water Resources Conference, held March 27–29, 2007, at the University of Georgia.

Abstract.

Pyrolysis of biomass for hydrogen fuel and bio-oil produces a char byproduct. There is evidence that land application of char may increase soil water holding capacity and the ability of the soil to retain nu-trients. Increases in these soil characteristics could be beneficial to plant growth as well as improving water quality. Chars produced under different conditions and from different feedstocks have different characteristics. Of the common feedstocks tested, peanut hull char con-tained higher nutrients and had a higher cation ex-change capacity than pine chip, pine bark, or hardwood chip chars. Preliminary moisture release curve data from a Tifton loamy sand indicated moisture holding capacity may be increased at very high rates of char addition. Soil moisture was periodically measured dur-ing the growing season in a field study of microplots amended with peanut hull and pine chip pellet char. Although the average soil water content of the plots amended at 22 Mg ha-1 was higher than the control, dif-ferences in volumetric water content were only signifi-cant on one date.

Characterization of Pyrolysis Char for Use as an Agricultural Soil Amendment
Keith Harris1, Julia Gaskin1, Leticia Sonon2, and K.C. Das1
1Dept. of Biol. & Ag. Eng., 2AESL, College of Ag & Env. Sci University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Introduction:
The Southeastern Coastal Plain in the United States is a major agricultural production area; however, soils are typically low in cation exchange capacity (CEC), nutrient content, and organic carbon content. For example, Tifton