Assessing the impact of water treatment residuals and rice straw compost on soil physical properties and wheat yield in saline sodic Soil

ABSTRACT

Rice straw compost (RC) and water treatment residuals (WTR) can improve both organic wastes recycling and soil physical properties of salt-affected soils. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test the effect of RC and its mixture with WTR on some physical properties of the saline-sodic soil, and wheat yield. The treatments were RC, WTR, and RC + WTR mixture at rates of 12 and 24 t ha⁻¹. The results indicated that the application of RC alone or combined with WTR significantly increased drainable porosity (DP), total porosity (TP), mean weight diameter (MWD) and total water-stable aggregates (WSA) as compared to control. The increase in soil DP under the 24 t of WTR ha⁻¹ was 64.7% greater than the control treatment. The mixtures of RC +WTR gave better results in increasing the dry weight and grain yield, especially the rate of 24 t of RC +WTR (1:2) ha⁻¹ soil as compared to adding them individually. The experimental results concluded that the WTR + RC mixture can be used as a promising strategy to increase wheat yield and improve the efficiency of recycled rice straw and WTR on the physical properties of saline-sodic soils.

KEYWORDS:

• Salt-affected soils
• rice straw compost
• water treatment residuals
• drainable porosity
• water-stable aggregates

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Laboratory of Soil and Water Sciences, Agriculture faculty, Tanta University, Egypt, for their assistance during this work.