Mineralization and humification of chicken manure and composted kitchen waste in soils based on an in situ litter-bag experiment: impacts of organic inputs and microbial community

Highlights

	● Chicken manure and composted kitchen waste had similar mineralization but different humification.
	● The carbon:nitrogen ratio of organic inputs and microbial community composition determined the mineralization and humification of organic inputs.
	● Enhanced humification led to greater carbon loss and nitrogen release.

Abstract

Organic inputs are key to increasing soil organic carbon in agricultural soils. This study aimed to unravel the process of mineralization and humification of chicken manure (CM) and composted kitchen waste (KW) using an in situ litter-bag incubation experiment. The results indicated that over 50%, 64% to 72%, and 62% to 85% of the initial mass, carbon and nitrogen, respectively, were lost through incubation with a marked loss occurring during the first 28 days. Increased humic acids (HAs), humus (HS) and degree of humification, along with a decrease in the level of fulvic acids and precursors for humic substances were observed through incubation. By comparison, CM demonstrated higher carbon and nitrogen conservation efficiencies and greater humification compared to KW. Additionally, a higher degree of humifaction and larger quantities of HAs and HS were not favorable for carbon and nitrogen conservation. Further structural equation modeling indicated that microbial community had a strong effect on carbon loss and nitrogen release, while stoichiometric properties of organic inputs were the main determinant of the mineralization and humification processes. These findings will enhance understanding of litter decomposition in soils and provide valuable references for soil carbon sequestration with organic inputs.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Decomposition / humic substances / humic substance precursors / microbial communities / organic amendments / soil carbon sequestration

References

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2024546 contains supplementary materials (Figs. S1–S5; Table S1).

Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the Key Research and Development Project for the Xizang Autonomous Region (XZ202101ZD003N, XZ202201ZY0003N), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFD1901402), and the Key Basic Research Foundation of Chongqing Academy of Agricultural Sciences (cqaas2023siczzd003).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yujia Shi, Haixia Zeng, Linfa Fang, Yue Deng, and Ran Xiao declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)