Effects of biochar and modified biochar on Chromium contaminated soil properties

Abstract

In recent years, increasingly more soils are getting
contaminated with organic and inorganic toxins globally due to
waste emissions. Among inorganic pollutants, heavy metals like
carcinogenic chromium (Cr) are alarming to our environment,
even though its environmental management is also ignored. As a
result, Cr accumulates in plant tissues at toxic concentrations and
ends up in the food chain. Therefore, pot experiments were
conducted to investigate the effects of biochar and modified
biochar application on the properties of Cr polluted soils and
interaction of Cr with other soil nutrients. Two different biochar
viz. rice stubble and saw dust were slowly pyrolyzed (450 ± 50ºC)
and modified with 1M KOH. All biochars were applied at a rate
of 20 t ha-1 on soils artificially polluted with Cr at the levels of 0,
100, 200 and 300 µg g-1
. The biochars and modified biochars had
significant effects (P<0.05) on available K, P, CEC, EC, and N of
incubated soils. Therefore, it has convincing evidence that
application of biochar and modified biochar is very imperative to
improve soil health, ameliorate Cr polluted soils, reduce the
amount of carbon produced due to biomass burning and thereby
enhances plant growth.