Soil Nitrogen Mineralization Influenced by Continuous Application of Livestock Manure Composts

The characteristics of nitrogen mineralization in upland soil was studied with 27-week incubation at . The used soils in this experiment were received six kinds of livestock manure compost each year for four years. Six different composts, which were chicken (CHM), pig (PIM), and cow (COM) manure composted without bulking agent, and chicken (CHMS), pig (PIMS), and cow (COMS) manure composted with sawdust as a bulking agent, were selected for this study. The first-order model was fit to the observed mineral nitrogen (N) vs incubation days using a non-linear regression procedure. The soil potential for N mineralization (No) of manure compost (CHM, PIM, and COM) treated soils were higher than those of the manure-sawdust compost (CHMS, PIMS, and COMS) treated soils. The No value of PIM applied soil was 15.0 mg 100 , which was the highest value among the treatments. The amount of N mineralized in compost applied soils ranged from 8.1% to 11.9% of the total N content in soils and increased with increasing total N content in soils. The organic matter content in compost applied soils were negatively correlated with No value (r = ). Therefore, our result indicated that determination of N application rate in livestock manure compost applied soil should be based on total nitrogen content better than soil organic matter content.