- Title
- Waste mineral powder supplies plant available potassium: evaluation of chemical and biological interventions
- Creator
- Basak, B. B.; Sarkar, Binoy; Sanderson, Peter; Naidu, Ravi
- Relation
- Journal of Geochemical Exploration Vol. 186, Issue March 2018, p. 114-120
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gexplo.2017.11.023
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- A study was conducted to evaluate a waste rock powder collected from the Seaham quarry in New South Wales, Australia, as a source of potassium (K) in soil. The K supplying capacity of different size fractions of the mineral powder was evaluated by employing five chemical extractants as well as growing maize and holy basil in sand culture experiments. The K release by chemical extractants increased with decreasing particle size of the mineral powder. The amount of K released by different extractants followed the order: water < 0.01 M calcium chloride < 0.01 M citric acid < 1 N ammonium acetate < 1 N boiling nitric acid. The cumulative K release from the mineral powder in successive extraction procedure was recorded higher with organic and mineral acids, which suggested that the material was a slow release K source. A significant positive correlation was observed between K release by different chemical extractants and the biomass yield (r = 0.93; p < 0.05) and K uptake (r = 0.96; p < 0.05) by plants. Among the different chemical extractants, 1 N ammonium acetate and 1 N boiling HNO3 showed higher correlations (r = 0.91 and 0.96, respectively) with plant K uptake values. Both the chemical and biological methods were able to extract only a portion (12–20%) of total K present in the mineral powder. The results indicated that the mineral powder could be used as a slow release K fertilizer in soils. Further studies in long term applications with exhaustive crops under field conditions are needed to assess its feasibility as a source of K in agriculture.
- Subject
- mineral powder; chemical extraction; potassium release; sand culture experiment; plant potassium uptake
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1394791
- Identifier
- uon:33758
- Identifier
- ISSN:0375-6742
- Rights
- © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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