Impact of fertilisers on soil properties and biomass yield under a long-term sweet sorghum cropping system

Manasi is one of the important agricultural regions in China's north-western Xinjiang and is located in an extremely arid and semi-arid region (Liu et al. 2012).Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is a common salt-tolerant grain sorghum crop suitable for arid land cultivation and shows several advantages, e.g., high biomass yield, rapid growth, wide adaptability to diverse climate and soil conditions, high resistance to drought and salinity, and good yield potential in marginal environments (Zhang et al. 2016).Therefore, sweet sorghum has been the most dominant forage crop cultivated in Xinjiang.Some experimental achievements conducted in this study area showed that the sweet sorghum cultivar Xingaoliang No. 3 was relatively more resistant to soil salinity and suitable for accumulating higher sugar content than other cultivars (Zaituniguli et al. 2012), and it has been cultivated for years with different fertilisation.The long-term application of farmyard manure (FYM) with balanced nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) fertiliser promotes soil microbial activity, prevents soil acidification and enhances crop production (Zhai et al. 2011, Chen et al. 2018).However, little attention has been paid to the change of soil fertility, the trend of annual crop yield, and the sugar contents of sweet sorghum for long-timescale in this region.Therefore, evaluating the fertilisation management for sustainable sorghum Impact of fertilisers on soil properties and biomass yield under a long-term sweet sorghum cropping system