Adding biochar, the solid coproduct of biofuel production, to peat can enhance strawberry growth, and disease resistance against the airborne fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Additionally, biochar can induce shifts in the strawberry rhizosphere microbiome. However, the moment that this biochar-mediated shift occurs in the rhizosphere is not known. Further, the effect of an above-ground infecti...

Application of biochar, a pyrolyzed biomass from organic sources, to agricultural soils is considered a promising strategy to sustain soil fertility leading to increased plant productivity. It is also known that applications of biochar to soilless potting substrates and to soil increases resistance of plants against diseases, but also bear the potential to have inconsistent and contradictory re...

World food security is under challenge to a great extent due to effects of climate change, continued population growth and resource-depleting practices on agriculture (IAASTD, 2009). Presently poor farmers use either organic manure or inorganic fertilizers (Mando et al., 2005; Topoliantz et al., 2005) for maintaining soil fertility as they cannot afford to apply fertilizers as a nutrient source...

Avoiding irreversible climate change requires >50% reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the year 2050 and the net removal of GHGs from the atmosphere by the end of the 21st century. This challenge is particularly daunting given that energy derived from fossil fuels is at the core of all modern economies and some sectors of the economy, such as transportation, will be alm...

Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential about 300 times higher than CO2. The main sources of N2O are microbial-mediated nitrogen transformation reactions in soils. Denitrification represents one of the major N2Oproducing pathways in oxygen-limited zones. Soil biochar amendment has been demonstrated to reduce N2O emissions in microcosms and in the field. Although N2O em...

Biochar amendments to soil have potential as a climate change mitigation strategy. However, their effect on carbon exchange in different ecosystems has not been well evaluated. Understanding how biochar affects carbon exchange from agricultural soil is essential for clarifying the contribution of biochar management to the carbon budget. We performed a laboratory and a two-year field experiment ...

When applied in agriculture, the solid carbonaceous residue of anoxic thermochemical conversion of biomass (biochar) has variable effects on soil, crop yields, and climate mitigation. Biochar can be added to soil as powder or as pellets. While powdered forms have demonstrated effects on crop yields, they may release coarse and fine particulate that can be transported into the atmosphere during ...

In Brazil, the degradation of nutrient-poor Ferralsols limits productivity and drives agricultural expansion into pristine areas. However, returning agricultural residues to the soil in a stabilized form may offer opportunities for maintaining or improving soil quality, even under conditions that typically promote carbon loss. We examined the use of biochar made from filtercake (a byproduct of ...

Biosorption with macroalgae is a promising technology for the bioremediation of industrial effluents. However, the vast majority of research has been conducted on simple mock effluents with little data available on the performance of biosorbents in complex effluents. Here we evaluate the efficacy of dried biomass, biochar, and Fe-treated biomass and biochar to remediate 21 elements from a real-...

During fungal rock phosphate (RP) solubilization, a significant quantity of fluoride (F(-)) is released together with phosphorus (P), strongly inhibiting the process. In the present study, the effect of two F(-) adsorbents [activated alumina (Al2O3) and biochar] on RP solubilization by Aspergillus niger was examined. Al2O3 adsorbed part of the F(-) released but also adsorbed soluble P, which ma...