Gross Ammonification and Nitrification Rates in Soil Amended with Natural and NH4-Enriched Chabazite Zeolite and Nitrification Inhibitor DMPP

Using zeolite-rich tuffs for improving soil properties and crop N-use efficiency is becoming popular. However, the mechanistic understanding of their influence on soil N-processes is still poor. This paper aims to shed new light on how natural and NH4+-enriched chabazite zeolites alter short-term N-ammonification and nitrification rates with and without the use of nitrification inhibitor (DMPP). We employed the 15N pool dilution technique to determine short-term gross rates of ammonification and nitrification in a silty-clay soil amended with two typologies of chabazite-rich tuff: (1) at natural state and (2) enriched with NH4+-N from an animal slurry. Archaeal and bacterial amoA, nirS and nosZ genes, N2O-N and CO2-C emissions were also evaluated. The results showed modest short-term effects of chabazite at natural state only on nitrate production rates, which was slightly delayed compared to the unamended soil. On the other hand, the addition of NH4+-enriched chabazite stimulated NH4+-N production, N2O-N emissions, but reduced NO3−-N production and abundance of nirS-nosZ genes. DMPP efficiency in reducing nitrification rates was dependent on N addition but not affected by the two typologies of zeolites tested. The outcomes of this study indicated the good compatibility of both natural and NH4+-enriched chabazite zeolite with DMPP. In particular, the application of NH4+-enriched zeolites with DMPP is recommended to mitigate short-term N losses.

Depolymerization and mineralization – investigating N availability by a novel ¹⁵N tracing model

Depolymerization of soil organic matter such as proteins and peptides into monomers (e.g. amino acids) is currently thought to be the rate limiting step for N availability in terrestrial N cycles. The mineralization of free amino acids (FAA), liberated by depolymerization of peptides, is an important fraction of the total N mineralization. Accurate assessment 10 of peptide depolymerization and FAA mineralization rates is important in order to gain a better understanding of the N cycle dynamics. Due to the short time span, soil disturbance and unnatural high FAA content during the first few hours after the labelling with the traditional 15N pool dilution experiments, analytical models might overestimate peptide depolymerization rate. In this paper, we present an extended numerical 15N tracing model Ntrace which incorporates the FAA pool and related N processes in order to 1) provide a more robust and coherent estimation of production and mineralization rates of FAAs; 2) 15 and 2) suggest an amino acid N use efficiency (NUEFAA) for soil microbes, which is a more realistic estimation of soil microbial NUE compared to the NUE estimated by analytical methods. We compare analytical and numerical approaches for two forest soils; suggest improvements of the experimental work for future studies; and conclude that: i) FAA mineralization might be as equally an important rate limiting step for gross N mineralization as peptide depolymerization rate is, because about half of all depolymerized peptide N is consecutively being mineralized; and that ii) FAA mineralization and FAA 20 immobilization rates should be used for assessing NUEFAA.