Effects of the Rapid Construction of a High-Quality Plough Layer Based on Woody Peat in a Newly Reclaimed Cultivated Land Area

Abstract

To implement the balance system of cultivated land in occupation and supplement and to adhere to the principle of “supplement the occupied cultivated land of high quality with the one bearing same quality”, in the thesis, a field experiment was conducted to study the effects of woody peat on soil physical, chemical, and biological properties of the plough layer and its crop yield. Furthermore, the correlation between soil indexes and crop yield under the best fertilization mode through the addition of the natural material of woody peat instead of lengthy cultivation of the plough layer to rapidly construct a high-quality plough layer and solve the practical problem that the natural endowment of newly reclaimed cultivated land is far less than the occupied high-quality cultivated land was explored. The land remediation project of Fuping County, Hebei Province, was taken as the experimental area, and the five most representative and effective datasets were selected and studied. The results demonstrated that the addition of woody peat and rotten straw could reduce soil particle size and bulk density and alleviate soil viscosity and acidification. An increase in soil organic matter, soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC), alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium and a decrease in the heavy metal content were also observed. The results indicated that the application of woody peat achieved the expected effect of the rapid construction of a high-quality plough layer. The best mode of fertilization was A2, which provided a good reference for the rapid construction of a high-quality plough layer in the future. The analysis of the correlation between soil indexes and crop yield illustrated that the organic matter content, soil available nutrients, and crop yield had a significant positive correlation; the organic matter content and soil available nutrients showed the same tendency, which suggests that soil organic matter content and soil fertility level are closely related and that soil fertility plays a decisive role in crop yield under the same external conditions. Woody peat exerted an eminent influence on the organic matter content and soil available nutrients to determine the change in crop yield, which provides a reliable basis for future research on land improvement projects to increase crop yield.

Keywords

• crop yield
• high-quality plough layer
• soil organic matter
• soil fertility