Abstract

ROTTMANN, N. and JOERGENSEN, R.G. (2011)

Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science 174, 373-380

A soil column experiment with maize straw application at different depths was carried out to investigate the accuracy of CO2 measurement systems in a greenhouse experiment with sandy and loamy soils. The classical approach of CO2 absorption in NaOH solution was compared in the present study with three other methods using dynamic chambers. These methods were gas chromatography, a portable infrared analyzer, and a portable photo-acoustic system. The cumulative CO2 production over the 57-day incubation period was significantly affected by the method and soil16specifically by the treatments. The NaOH and GC method always formed a pair of lowest cumulative CO2 production in all treatments with maize straw addition. In the treatments with bottom application of the maize straw, IR and PAS methods gave values at identical levels in both soils. In the treatments with top application of the maize straw, the IR method gave significantly highest values in the sandy soil and the PAS method in the loamy soil. The correlation coefficients between the cumulative CO2 production of the three dynamic chamber methods (GC, IR, and PAS) and the static NaOH method were all significant, with r-values between 0.90 and 0.93. The C balance can be used for testing the plausibility of CO2 production data. Roughly 102% (NaOH and GC) and 114% (IR and PAS) were recovered, including the CO2 production data in the C balance of the sandy soil. The respective data were 97% (NaOH and GC) and 104% (IR and PAS) for the loamy soil.