Effect of organic treatments on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in vineyard

Summary

The work aims to investigate the effects of different soil management strategies on carbon sequestration and total nitrogen in areas of vineyards suffering from loss of soil functionality. Treatments, selected for inter-row management, to re-install soil functionality were based on compost or other organic amendments (COMP), green manure (GM), and dry mulching (DM) strategies using winter legumes and cereals. Cover crops were seeded in fall and mown in late spring, leaved in the ground for mulching in DM or incorporated into the uppermost soil layers in GM. Such approaches were investigated in six vineyards in Italy, six in France, and two vineyards in Slovenia and Turkey.
The results showed that COMP significantly increased total organic carbon (TOC) and total nitrogen (Ntot) in the topsoil after one year of application. Also DM tends to increase significantly TOC in the topsoil, but only after two years. Modelling 20-year carbon stock dynamics in Italy vineyards, the average increase resulted 0.49, 0.34, 0.21 and 0.03 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 for COMP, DM, GM and control, respectively.