Impacts of biochar addition on soil dissolved organic matter characteristics in a wheat-maize rotation system in Loess Plateau of China

•Biochar addition significantly influenced the content of soil DOM.•Three fluorescent components were found in soil DOM by EEM-PARAFAC.•Fulvic acid-like, humic acid-like and tryptophan-like materials were identified.•Fluorescence intensity of identified components was high in the biochar treatment.

Biochar amendment in soil has the potential to sequester carbon, improve soil quality and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in agriculture, but the impact of biochar amendments on dissolved organic matter (DOM) properties of soils in the fertilized agro-ecosystem has received little research attention. This study performed a long-term field experiment to assess the influence of biochar amendments (different addition rate: 4 t ha−1 and 8 t ha−1) on DOM characteristics in soils in wheat-maize rotation system in Loess Plateau of China by exploiting fluorescence excitation-emission spectrophotometry and parallel factor analysis (EEM-PARAFAC). Our results showed that the content of soil DOM was significantly influenced by the addition of biochar, and the higher biochar addition markedly increased the mean concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (from 83.99 mg kg−1 to 144.27 mg kg−1) in soils under the same fertilizer application. Three identified fluorescent components (fulvic acid-like, humic acid-like and tryptophan-like) were found, and fluorescence intensity of those components (especially humic-like material) was enhanced with the increasing DOC in the biochar treatments but the composition of DOM was not changed. These findings would be beneficial to understand the biochar's effects and processes in decreasing GHG emissions from soils.

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