Assessment of the Change in Soil Properties and Aggregates Formation of Freshly Restored Texturally Different Marginally Salt-Affected Soils Under Various Soil Amelioration Strategies

ABSTRACT

Climate change and salt-affected soils detrimentally affect crop production in arid regions. Reclaiming these soils for crops and carbon sequestration can mitigate climate change and enhance food security. A laboratory-scale experiment was conducted on a wheat-maize crop rotation system for three consecutive years to check the effectiveness of organic amendments in reclaiming marginally salt-affected soils, improving soil health, sequestering carbon, and improving food grain production. This study included five treatments namely control (T1), gypsum alone at 100% gypsum requirements (G100), and its combinations with different organic amendments and 50% gypsum requirements (farm manure (FYM+G50), poultry manure (PM+G50), and green manure (GM+G50)) were used. Results indicated that sandy clay loam textured soil showed highest potential for its properties improvement after 45 days, i.e., EC decreased up to 3.9 dS m⁻¹, pH 7.9 and, SOC increase up to 0.25%. After the fallow period, three consecutive years of crop production study indicated up to 39 and 70% increase in wheat and maize yields, respectively, compared to inorganic fertilizer alone. Maximum soil aggregation was noted in treatment with gypsum and farmyard manure application in loam soils (50%). The maximum soil organic carbon accumulation over the whole experiment was recorded in farmyard manure application in combination with gypsum (0.44 g kg⁻¹) in both loam and sandy clay loam soil, while 0.31 g kg⁻¹ in the clay loam soil. Based on the results, it was concluded that reclaiming marginally salt-affected soils enhances food crop production and incorporating manures improves soil through aggregation and carbon sequestration, mitigating climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Food security
• organic wastes
• salt stress
• soil degradation
• soil properties

Acknowledgements

The primary author wants to acknowledge Prof. Jo Smith, Personal Chair, Modelling Group of the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, UK, for all the manuscript editing and providing all the facilities required in drafting this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Author contributions

Conceptualization, Z.U.R.F., M.S.; Methodology, Z.U.R.F.; Software, Z.U.R.F.; Formal analysis, Z.U.R.F.; Writing-original draft preparation, Z.U.R.F. and A.A.Q.; Writing-review and editing, Z.U.R.F. and U.Z.; Visualization, Z.U.R.F.; A.A.Q.; W.M.D.; Supervision, M.S.; Project administration, M.S.; Funding acquisition, Z.U.R.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All the data are presented in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan, under grant number 518-75399-2PS5-005.