Effects of Soil Amendment Application on Soil Physico-chemical Properties and Yields of Summer Forage Crops in the Sukmoon Reclaimed Tidal Land in Korea

Soil physico-chemical properties and microbial densities are affected by organic sources and soil amendment applied to improve soil environments or quality. Generally organic fertilizer effects on forage crops yield and soil properties are partly due to changes of soil composition. We investigated the effects of swine slurry (SS), swine slurry composting-biofilteration(SCB) and chemical fertilizer(F) with gypsum(G) combinations on soil physico-chemical properties and yields of summer forage crop in the Sukmoon reclaimed tidal land in Korea. The forage crops used in this experiment were corn and sorghum×sudangrass hybrid(hereafter sorghum). Our results showed that the soil physico-chemical properties in the combined (F+G, SS+G, SCB+G) treatments increased contents of organic matter and exchangeable Ca 2+ , but exchangeable Na + , K + and Mg 2+ reduced to 1-10% for two forage crops, compared to non-combined (F, SS, SCB) treatment. The density of soil microorganism such as bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi, increased significantly by SS+G and SCB+G treatments. This means that treatment of combined organic fertilizer with G lowered salinity levels and improved with microbial growth. The combined treatments also increased the total yields 2.3-6.2% for corn and 2.0-8.7% for sorghum, compared with non-combined treatment. This experiment suggests the combined treatments could increase the total yields of summer forage crops and change of soil physico-chemical properties in the Sukmoon reclaimed tidal land in Korea.