A Brief Study on Ph, Exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in Farmlands Under Tobacco-Rice Rotation in Xuancheng City of South Anhui
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Agricultural Sciences, 2018, 9, 480-488 http://www.scirp.org/journal/as ISSN Online: 2156-8561 ISSN Print: 2156-8553 A Brief Study on pH, Exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in Farmlands under Tobacco-Rice Rotation in Xuancheng City of South Anhui Anqi Wang1,2, Ka Lin1,2, Chengxin Ma3, Qin Gao3, Qifa Zhu3, Xuejun Ji3, Guo Zhang3, Lin Xue3, Chaolong Zu4, Chaoqiang Jiang4, Jia Shen4, Decheng Li1* 1State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China 2University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 3Institute of Tobacco Science, Anhui Agricultural Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China 4Wannan Tobacco Co. Ltd., Xuancheng, China How to cite this paper: Wang, A.Q., Lin, Abstract K., Ma, C.X., Gao, Q., Zhu, Q.F., Ji, X.J., 2+ 2+ Zhang, G., Xue, L., Zu, C.L., Jiang, C.Q., pH, exchangeable Ca and Mg of soil can influence the yield and quality of Shen, J. and Li, D.C. (2018) A Brief Study flue-cured tobacco. Xuancheng city is the dominant tobacco-planting region 2+ 2+ on pH, Exchangeable Ca and Mg in in Anhui province since 2008. A general soil survey was conducted in Xuan- Farmlands under Tobacco-Rice Rotation in cheng city to understand the current situations of pH, exchangeable Ca2+ and Xuancheng City of South Anhui. Agricul- 2+ tural Sciences, 9, 480-488. Mg of farmlands under tobacco-rice rotation and to decide whether conti- https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2018.94033 nuous applying dolomite powders to abate soil acidification. In total 124 top- soil samples (0 - 20 cm) were collected from the typical farmlands and soil pH, Received: March 1, 2018 exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ were measured. The results showed that soil pH Accepted: April 27, 2018 2+ 2+ Published: April 30, 2018 and Ca and Mg in Xuancheng city were generally in the suitable grades, pH 2+ ranged from 4.56 to 8.42 with an average of 5.87, exchangeable Ca ranged Copyright © 2018 by authors and from 1.01 cmol(1/2Ca2+) kg−1 to 100.55 cmol(1/2Ca2+) kg−1 with an average of Scientific Research Publishing Inc. 11.07 cmol(1/2Ca2+) kg−1, and exchangeable Mg2+ ranged from 0.14 This work is licensed under the Creative cmol(1/2Mg2+) kg−1 to 2.86 cmol(1/2Mg2+) kg−1 with an average of 0.81 Commons Attribution International 2+ −1 License (CC BY 4.0). cmol(1/2Mg ) kg , all spanned from the low grades to the high grades. To http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the whole Xuancheng city, 37.10%, 62.10% and 72.58% of the surveyed farm- Open Access 2+ 2+ lands were in the low grades of pH, exchangeable Ca and Mg , respectively, while 52.42%, 25.00% and 20.97% of the farmlands were in the suitable grades, respectively. pH had an extremely significantly positive Napierian lo- garithm correlation with exchangeable Ca2+ and an extremely significantly positive power correlation with exchangeable Mg2+. In total about 338.2 kg∙hm−2 of Ca2+ and 202.4 kg∙hm−2 of Mg2+ are annually input into the farm- lands, while about 110.4 kg∙hm−2 of Ca2+ and 7.4 kg∙hm−2 of Mg2+ are annually moved out from the farmlands, exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ were annually increased by 225.2 kg∙hm−2 and 187.6 kg∙hm−2 in the farmlands, respectively. It DOI: 10.4236/as.2018.94033 Apr. 30, 2018 480 Agricultural Sciences A. Q. Wang et al. is necessary to monitor the farmlands dynamically in order to decide whether continuous applying dolomite powders which should be dependent upon the specific conditions of individual farmlands. Keywords pH, Exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+, Dolomite Powders, Farmlands, Tobacco-Rice Rotation, Xuancheng City 1. Introduction pH, exchangeable Ca2+ (exc. Ca2+) and Mg2+ (exc. Mg2+) of soil can influence the yield and quality of flue-cured tobacco [1] [2] [3]. For tobacco planting, the rea- sonable soil pH is ranged from 5.5 to 7.0, while the suitable exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ are from 6 to 10 cmol(1/2Ca2+) kg−1 and 1.0 to 1.6 cmol(1/2Mg2+) kg−1, respec- tively [4] [5]. However, most of the tobacco planting farmlands in south China 2+ 2+ are acid and insufficient in exc. Ca and Mg [6] [7], so it is common to apply dolomite powders (C2CaMgO6), quicklime (CaO) or calcium magnesium phos- phate fertilizer to adjust soil pH and supply Ca and Mg nutrients [7] [8] [9] [10]. Xuancheng city is the dominant tobacco planting region in Anhui province since 2008 with a regular tobacco-planting area of about 1 × 104 hm2 (constituted by 90% more of the tobacco-planting area in Anhui province) and a yield of to- bacco leaves of about 1 × 104 t [11]. Similarly, the tobacco-planting farmlands in Xuancheng city also face the same problems of acidification and insufficient exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ [12] [13], for example, the area percentage of the farmlands with pH < 5.5 was increased from 30% of total farmland in 1980’s (data of the 2nd Na- tional Soil Survey) to 60% of the total farmland in 2007 (data of the Soil Testing and Formulated Fertilization Project). Thus, dolomite powders which are alka- line and rich in Ca and Mg have been widely even intensively in the recent dec- ade [7] [8] [9]. Currently, the local farmers urgently want to know the present situations of soil pH and exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the farmlands in order to decide whether con- tinues applying dolomite powders. Thus, in December 2015 a general soil survey was conducted in Xuancheng city in which topsoil samples (0 - 20 cm) were col- lected from the typical farmlands under tobacco-rice rotation and soil pH, exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ were measured. 2. Methods and Materials 2.1. General Situation of Xuancheng City Xuancheng city is located in the south Anhui province (117˚58'E - 119˚40', 29˚57' - 31˚19'N) with a total area of 1.23 × 104 km2, the mean annual sunshine duration, temperature, precipitation, dryness and frost-free period is 1784 h, 15.6˚C, 1200 - 1500 mm, 0.68 - 0.90 and 240 d, respectively, the landform is DOI: 10.4236/as.2018.94033 481 Agricultural Sciences A. Q. Wang et al. complex and diverse, mountains, hills and valley basins are interlaced in the south with a mean altitude of 1200 - 1800 m, hills and downlands are distributed in the middle with a mean altitude of 15 - 100 m, while alluvial plains are domi- nant in the north with a mean altitude of 7 - 12 m. The tobacco-planting soils are mainly paddy soils mainly under tobacco-rice rotation. The annual fertiliza- −2 tion is pure N 90 - 120 kg∙hm with N:P2O5:K2O of 1:1.4 - 1.7:3.2 - 3.5 in the to- −2 bacco planting season while pure N 180 - 225 kg∙hm with N:P2O5:K2O of 1:0.5:0.8 in the rice planting season. For acid farmland (topsoil pH < 5.5), about 1500 kg∙hm−2 of 250 μm-diameter dolomite powders are applied before planting tobacco, which is proved to increase soil pH by one unit [8]. 2.1. Soil Sampling and Measurement Based on the database of tobacco farmers of Wannan Tobacco Ltd. Company in 2015, in total 124 typical tobacco-planting farmlands were determined according to their spatial distributions (see Figure 1 and Table 1), these farmlands be- longed to different model tobacco farmers due to their excellent skills in flue-cured tobacco planting and great planting area (about 2 - 7 hm2) of tobacco. Random multipoint method was used for the topsoil sampling (0 - 20 cm) in each typical farmland. Soil samples were air dried, ground and passed 1 mm and 0.25 mm sieves, then pH was determined by potentiometer, exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ were by atomic absorption spectrophotometer after extracted by ammonium acetate [14] [15] [16]. 2.2. Classification of Soil pH and Exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ Table 2 is the grading standards of soil pH and exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ for tobacco planting [4] [5]. 2.3. Data Processing and Thematic Mapping Data were analyzed with Microsoft Excel 2013 and IBM Statistics SPSS 20.0, the spatial distribution of topsoil samples was mapped on the platform of Esri Arc-GIS 10.3. 3. Results and Discussions 3.1. General Statistics of Soil pH and Exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ Table 3 shows the statistic information of topsoil pH and exc. Ca2+ and Mg2+ of typical tobacco planting farmlands in Xuancheng. For soil pH, it ranged from the low grade to the high grade in the whole Xuancheng city, also ranged from the low grade to the high grade in Xuanzhou district, Langxi county and Jing county, meanwhile ranged from the low grade to the suitable grade in Jingde county, Guangde county and Ningguo city. For soil exc. Ca2+, it ranged from the low grade to the high grade in the whole Xuancheng city, also ranged from the low grade to the high grade in Xuanzhou DOI: 10.4236/as.2018.94033 482 Agricultural Sciences A. Q. Wang et al. Figure 1. Spatial distribution of sampling sites of farmlands under to- bacco-rice rotation in Xuancheng. Table 1. Regional distribution of surveyed farmlands under tobacco-rice rotation in Xuancheng. Xuanzhou Langxi Jingde Jing Guangde Ningguo Region Total district county county county county city Sample 42 11 21 29 13 8 124 No.