Grade: The second prize
Winners: Shen Qirong, Xu Yangchun, Yang Fan, Yang Xingming, Xue Zhiyong, Lu Jianming, Xu Mao, Li Rong, Zhao Yongzhi, Huang Qiwei, Zhang Ruifu, Yu Guanghui, Ran Wei, and Shen Biao.
Collaborators: Nanjing Agricultural University, National Agro-technical Popularization Service Center, Jiangyin Lianye Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jiangsu Province Cultivated Land Quality Protection Station, Beijing Soil and Fertilizer Workstation
Conventional organic manures or crop straws often turns into organic solid wastes discarded by farmers, seriously polluting the environment. This project aimed to make use of the wastes by exploring the cycling and transformation of organic nutrients in the soil-plants-animal system and the effects of this processon soil quality, and to develop processes and techniques of commercial organic fertilizeror organic-inorganic mixed fertilizer production.
(1) Establishing a method for research on 13C15N labelled organic fertilizers, providing a new technology for related studies in China and in the world.
The project for the first time employed the isotope of 13C15N to label crop straw and animal manures, and found that 15% of the 13C residue in the soil was presented in detritus acid substances, 80% in humin and 5% in soil microorganisms, and that the major mechanism of the synergistic interaction between organic and inorganci N was that organic fertilizer quickly turned the chemical 15N applied in soil into microbial 15N which was then mineralized into inorganic N during the later stage of crops forming “transitional pool” of soil available N. This made the process of soil N supply coincided with that of the plant requirment.
(2) Using the “454 sequencing technique” and spectroscopic technique to reveal, for the first time, the major mechanisms of organic-fertiling soil by improving the microbiota in soils and stabilizing the structure of organic matter in soils.
Compared with application of chemical fertilizers, long-term organic fertilization not only increased microbial biomass, microbial diversity and enzyme activity in soils, but also contributed to even distribution of microbial biomass in soils, enhanced the richness of effective microbial communities in plants, such as pseudomonas,bacillus,bacteroides, and so on, but also significantly decreased the acidophilous acid bacillus, thus inhibiting soil acidification. Organic fertilization significantly increased the number of N-transformation-related functional genes.
Studies using 13CCPNMR indicated that application of composts and organic-inorganic mixed fertilizers increased the proportion of saccharide carbon in soils, but decreased the ratio of alkyl C to alkoxy C and their aromaticity, and eventually reduced the degree of degradation of organic matter in soils; and, at the same time, that long-term application of organic fertilizers drastically increased the contents of amorphous nano minerals, such as allophane, imogoplie, amorphous iron minerals, and so on. This was important for accumulation of organic matter in soils.
(3) Establishing for the first time the processes of dehydration of fresh manures of animals and poultry and effective composting.
Fresh manure that was biologically dehydrated by fly larvae with high added value couldbe directly usedforcomposting. This project had produced the processes of stacking composting and related facilities, the latter of which was only one fifth of the price of the imported ones but worked more efficiently shortening the composting period from 1-2 month in the conventional composting to two weeks in our invented composting technology.This peoject also invented an easy method for detecting the maturity of composts by factories.
(4) Innovating organic fertilizer extension mechanisms and laying foundation for better quality of cultivated land in China.
The project greatly affected organic fertilizer industry in China. Influenced by the research results of this project and responding to the researchers’ appeal, the State Bureau of Taxation and the Ministry of Finance have issued tax-free policies for organic fertilizers, and the Ministry of Agriculture has issued subsidy policies forincreasing the application of organic fertilizers and thus inceasing soil organic matter,which stimulated the farmers’ enthusiasm for organic fertilizer application.
This project consisted of following achievements: being authorized for seven Chinese invention patents and four practical patents; publishing 106 papers, including 35 SCI papers; extending the application of stacking composting processes to 161 organic fertilizer companies with an increase of economic benefit of 771.21 million RMB; treating a total of 40 million tons of solid organic wastes and producing 15 million tons of commercial organic fertilizers which were applied on 180 million mu of farmland. To sum up, this project has led a rapid development of the organic fertilizer industry in China, producing significantly beneficial social, economic and ecological effects.
