Abstract
Purpose
This work was based on a 40-year fertilization experiment to reveal the effect of organic amendments on the accumulation of heavy metals in soils and wheat grains. The results indicated that long-term application of organic amendments changed the accumulation of heavy metals in grains mainly by affecting soil chemical properties and wheat yields rather than soil heavy metals.
Organic amendments have been widely used in agricultural practices to improve soil quality and crop yield, but it may lead to heavy metals (HMs) accumulation in the soil when livestock manure is applied. Currently, reports on the effects of organic amendments on HMs enrichment in crop grains are conflicting.
Materials and methods
Soils and wheat grains were collected from a 40-year fertilization experiment in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain in China to determine the concentrations of Cu, Zn, Cd, and As under different fertilization regimes. Additionally, soil chemical properties, available HMs contents, and wheat yields were measured to identify the main factors controlling grain HMs accumulation.
Results and discussion
The results showed that, compared to non-fertilized soil, the 40-year application of swine manure markedly increased soil Cu and Zn by 113.5% and 92.3%, respectively; and cattle manure increased soil Cu, Zn, and Cd by 19.2%, 16.7%, and 102.6%, respectively. Straw amendment led to lower Zn content in the soil. Conversely, the concentrations of Cu, Zn, and As in wheat grains were significantly reduced by the application of organic amendments, whereas higher grain Cd was observed in the straw amendment treatment. The partial least squares path model indicated that wheat yield was positively correlated with soil chemical properties, and thus had a strong negative effect on grain Cu, Zn, and As (direct path coefficient = − 0.8541), whereas soil HMs had relatively weak effects. Redundancy analysis further illustrated that alkali-hydrolyzed nitrogen was the primary influencing factor among soil chemical properties, which explained 44.2% of the variation in grain HMs and negatively correlated with the concentrations of Cu, Zn, and As in wheat grains. Soil pH was negatively correlated grain Cd concentration and explained 40.8% of the grain HMs variation.
Conclusions
Long-term application of livestock manure reduces the accumulation of Cu, Zn, and As in wheat grains by promoting soil chemical properties and wheat yields, while straw amendment increases grain Cd mainly due to lower soil pH. Soil HMs had weak effect on grain HMs.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Anhui Province Key Research & Development Plan of China (2022107020004) and the Second Level Youth Development Fund from Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences (QNYC-202115).
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Wu, P., Guo, Z., Hua, K. et al. Long-term application of organic amendments changes heavy metals accumulation in wheat grains by affecting soil chemical properties and wheat yields. J Soils Sediments 23, 2136–2147 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03473-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03473-3