Soil Biological Activity in Relation to Organic and Bio-fertilizer Application

Abstract

The aim is to study the effect of organic materials (filter mud cake, sheep and chicken manures) and bio-fertilizer (effective microorganism's, EM) on the soil biological activity indicated by CO 2-evolution. The experiment was set in a complete randomization design with four replicates. The results indicated that the combination of organic materials and EM gave maximum rate of cumulative CO 2-C released under chicken manure with EM treatment. Also, it enhanced the CO 2-C fluxes process during the incubation time particularly at 3 and 7 days (13.14 and 12.22 mg C /100g soil, respectively) where fluxes peak appeared. CO 2-C fluxes differed among treatments according to the descending order; Chicken manure + EM > sheep manure + EM > filter mud + EM > chemical fertilizer + EM > EM only. At full incubation time (127 days), the individual treatment of organic materials with EM decreased soil OM content less to 0.50 %.