Biodegradable film mulching promotes better soil quality and increases summer maize grain yield in North China Plain

ABSTRACT

Soil pollution caused by the residual polyethylene film is a potential threat to agricultural sustainability. Biodegradable films are generally effective alternatives to reduce this pollution. However, soil quality changes responding to continuous biodegradable film mulch are still unclear. To reveal the accumulative effects of biodegradable film mulch on soil quality, we conducted a positioning experiment from 2016 to 2019 in North China Plain (NCP). Four treatments, including transparent polyethylene film mulching (PM), transparent biodegradable film mulching (TM), black biodegradable film mulching (BM), and non-mulching (CK) were employed. The results showed that compared with CK, both BM and TM treatments significantly reduced soil bulk density and increased soil microbial activity and soil enzyme activity; however, BM and TM did not affect soil nutrient content. Compared with CK, BM treatment significantly increased soil quality index (SQI) by 7.2% (in 2019) due to higher soil fertility content and bioactivity; however, TM and PM treatments decreased SQI by 3.2% and 3.8%, respectively. Besides, compared with CK, BM significantly enhanced summer maize grain yield by 30.35%. Therefore, black biodegradable film is a potential alternative to polyethylene film to improve soil quality and maize production in NCP.

KEYWORDS:

• Biodegradable film
• polyethylene film
• soil nutrition content
• soil enzyme activity
• grain yield

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China under grant [number 2016YFB0302402], the Special Project for Agro-Ecological Environment Protection of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China under grant [number 2110402].

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.

Notes

1. The soil enzyme activity of the same treatment had significant difference between years (Table 5).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China [2016YFB0302402]; Agro-Ecological Environment Protection of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China [2110402].