Brown et al. (2023): Agronomic amendments drive a diversity of real and apparent priming responses within a grassland soil

Robert W. Brown, Eleanor Y. Reed, David R. Chadwick, Paul W. Hill, Davey L. Jones IN: Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 189, 109265, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2023.109265

Soil carbon (C) sequestration is often viewed as a nature-based solution to help mitigate climate change. Key to realising this potential is a better understanding of which C inputs promote greater long-term C storage. The apparent PE (changes in CO₂ from microbial biomass turnover) of substrates is often studied as a confounding factor, however, the real PE (decomposition of native SOM) is rarely measured due to uncertainties in C pool differentiation. Here, the authors used a 50-day mesocosm study to compare the effect of various common soil amendments (wood biochar and ash, protein, amino acids, glucose, cellulose, cattle farmyard manure (FYM), cattle slurry, inorganic N fertiliser, and different ratios of wheat straw:shoot mixes) on the real and apparent PEs of soil, using 5-year old quasi-stable ¹⁴C-labelled SOM and ¹⁴C-labelled active microbial biomass, respectively.

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