Some soil biological and chemical properties as affected by biofertilizers and organic ameliorants application on paddy rice

Abstract

Biofertilizers are compounds that contain microorganisms capable of increasing the nutrient availability to plants and increasing plant growth rate. The purpose of this research is to study the effects of biofertilizers and organic ameliorants on some of soil bio-chemical properties. The pot experiment was conducted at the field of the Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Padjadjaran Indonesia. The experiment was conducted in a randomized block complete design format consisting of twelve treatments and three replications. The experiment consisted of control, solid biofertilizer (50 kg ha-1), liquid biofertilizer (5 L ha-1), a combination of solid biofertilizers (50 kg ha-1) with organic ameliorants (10t ha-1) (composted straw, biochar and cow manure), a combination of liquid biofertilizer (5 L ha-1) and organic ameliorants (10 t ha-1), and each of ameliorants (10 t ha-1) independently. The results of experiment revealed that the application of solid biofertilizers and organic ameliorants significantly improved some soil biological properties (population of phosphate solubilizing microbes, N-fixing bacteria and phosphatase activity) and increased some soil chemical properties such as total N, available P, organic C and cation exchange capacity.

Keywords

• ameliorant
• biofertilizers
• phosphatase activity
• soil
• microorganism