@ Elaheh, biochar contains free bases like calcium, magnesium and potassium which can readily released in the soil solution after application resulted an increase in soil pH and exchangeable bases. So, you may definitely expect increase in soil pH of your tea garden soil where pH is only between 3 and 4. Application of biochar in tea garden may also improve moisture-holding capacity, cation-exchange capacity, and microbial flora population and diversity.

Thank you @ J. C. Tarafdar, for your detailed and great explanation of biochar application and function in the soil.

An interesting question . Tea is globally grown on acidic soils representing Alfisols/Ultisols/Oxisols predominantly with Entisols/Inceptisols to a lesser extent . This is one crop , we anticipate huge multiple benefits due to biochar intervention , let it be any range of acidic cultivated soils , right from improvement in soil health to disease management , but need a long term study.

Interesting.

Thank you @Anoop Kumar Srivastava. Yes you mentioned the right point concerning the long-term study and monitoring in the field of study.

The best results with biochar are in Ultisols and Oxisols which are old tropical red and yellow soils.

The genesis of the modern biochar concept comes from study of Amazonian black earths from human intervention the terra preta soils which appear in an areas the size of France in Brazil.

This carbon rich soil is the produce of charcoals and organic wastes.

The ashes from particularly high temperature burns are quite alkaline very amenable for limiting acid oxisols and ultisols.

Dependiing on the temperature from 250 C or upward the char can be nearly neural but the high temperature pyrolysis gives a very alkaline char.

Compost can give very similar and even better productivity than the use of biochar but biochar retains the carbon level better over time.

The liming of soils gives more biological activity in addition to the pH effect biochar gives the sites for microbial activity and improves the aeration by providing a more porous medium.

Using vermiccompost compost and biochar will give the ability to help plants immediately and during the medium and lng term based on the release patterns of the materials.

If the tea plantation had the interow establishment of ornamental peanuts.

The ornamental peanut provides a good cover erosion control and is about to provide all the nitrogen requirement.

Your mixture of vermicompost compost and biochar can be used in the planting hole.

Soil erosion is a very critical factor in soil degradation. Legumes are some of the best ways of soil improvement for better soil biology and can work to make the plantation more sustainable and manageable.

Requirement of lime in tea soils to improve tea growth and yield

• January 2015
• 📷Syed Hafizur Rahman

Get a full soil analysis and target liming and or biochar to get a pH of 5.5 from the original value. If your pH is less than 5.0 add 1 MT per ha incorporate and let it react. Take pH each year to tract its changes.

Yield of tea in Bangladesh is low compared to other tea growing countries of the world. Low pH is one of the main reasons for low yield. To investigate the status of pH level of tea soils, data of different tea estates from 2006 t0 2009 was collected from Bangladesh Tea Research Institute Soil Analytical Reports. Data show that in 2006, optimum pH level (4.5 -5.8) was found in 53% of the samples analyzed whereas in 2009 this level reduced to 26%. It reveals that this optimum range was decreasing gradually per year. On the other hand, percent of soil samples having pH between 4.0 - 4.4 was recorded as 44 in 2006 and it was increased to 59 in 2009.This reveals that pH was decreasing sharply with time. Amount of liming material required to raise pH to certain level depends on initial pH of the soil. This study showed that 2.5, 9.97, 10.14, 14.00 and 17.55 t/ha dolomite were required to raise pH to 5.0 from 4.5, 4.1, 4.0, 3.4 and 3.3, respectively. To find out the impact of lime on the yield in combination with other fertilizers, an experiment consisted of 7 treatments was set up in Sathgao Tea Estate Section 22, Bilashcherra section 8 and section 2. In these experimental areas, calculated amount of dolomite was applied to the treatment along with fertilizers. It was recorded that in Sathgao experimental area the yields of T6 and T7 treatments were increased over T4 and T5 by 14% and 4.2%, respectively. In Bilashcherra experimental plot 8, yield of T6 increased over T4 by 1.6% whereas T7 increased over T5 by 6.8%. In case of Bilashcherra section 2, increments of yield were found as 4.4% and 5.8% at the same sequence. Use of fertilizers had also an impact in lowering pH of soil. Effect of liming material was found to vary in two different areas.

… Read more

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Thank you @Paul Reed Hepperly for your useful suggestions and detailed explanation.

The system may well benefit from the input of bases as others have said, but who knows what that may do to the quality of the product.

As I understand it, tea is usually grown with big N inputs (potentially very acidifying) and the small amount of base in any conceivably commercial biochar application is likely to be comparatively trivial.

Thank you @Paul Milham for sharing your opinion.

When tea is grown with heavy ammoniated fertilizer use it will cause acid soil infertility to become more serious.

The acidification issues are less when ornamental peanut Arachis pinnodes is used and the cover give good erosion control and minimizing the need for weed control. Periodic moving is more than enough.

The ornamental peanut can produce all the nitrogen needs for optimized tea production.

fyi photo of the ornamental peanut

Dear @Paul Reed Hepperly, thank you for suggesting very useful tip to reduce acidification of tea soils.

The application of biochar could increase soil pH value. Wang et al. (2014) reported that rice husk biochar increased the tea garden soil (acid soil) pH from 3.33 to 3.63. The agricultural soil pH increased by almost 1 pH unit for biochar treatment which produced from mixed hardwood (Quercus spp. and Carya spp.) (Laird et al. 2010). The increase of soil pH could change the form of nutrients and facilitate some elements adsorption of the root. Cation exchange capacity is indirect measures of the capacity of soils to retain water and nutrients. Laird et al. (2010) indicated that the biochar treatments significantly increased cation exchange capacity by 4 to 30 % and relative to the controls. Similarly, cation exchange capacity of the highly weathered soil was increased from 7.41 to 10.8 cmol kg−1 after biochar treatment, which produced from Leucaena leucocephala (Jien and Wang 2013). Moreover, the increase in the amount of exchangeable cations in the amended soils suggested an improvement in soil fertility and nutrient retention, which may be attributed to the high specific surface area and a number of carboxylic groups of the biochar (Cheng et al. 2006). The amounts of the extractable nutrient elements (e.g., Na, K, Ca, and Mg) could be increased after biochar application. Wang et al. (2014) indicated that the amounts of the extractable K, Ca, Na, and Mg approximately increased by ranging from 60 to 670 % after biochar addition. For example, the K content of soil increased from 42 to 324 mg kg−1 (Wang et al. 2014). In addition, biochar treatment could increase base saturation percentage from 6.4 to 26 % and saturated hydraulic conductivity from 16.7 to 33.1 cm h−1, decrease soil erosion rate from 1458 to 532 g m−2 h−1 (Jien and Wang 2013), and increase total C from 2.27 to 2.78 % and total N from 0.24 to 0.25 % and available P from 15.7 to 15.8 mg kg−1 (Jones et al. 2012). These improvements in soil chemical properties could increase soil fertility by increasing the nutrient contents and availability.

However, changes of soil physical or chemical properties were not always detected. For instance, Jones et al. (2012) indicated that soil electrical conductivity (from 46 to 43 μS cm−1) and bulk density (from 1.04 to 1.08 g cm−1) were not significantly influenced after 3 years of biochar addition in a UK field trial. Even the same experiment, in the first year application of biochar, it seems to ameliorate soil physical quality to some extent, including increasing porosity, decreasing soil bulk density, and improving soil aggregation (Nelissen et al. 2015). However, Nelissen et al. (2015) did not observe the difference between hydraulic conductivity and plant available water capacity in the second year after biochar application. Additionally, over 2 years, biochar application did not have a significant impact on soil chemical properties, except for organic carbon content and C: N ratios (Nelissen et al. 2015). These results suggested that the influences of biochar on soil physical and chemical properties are varied with different application conditions. Long-term field trials need to be conducted to test whether soil properties can be influenced permanently through biochar application. Overall, the improvements of soil properties could directly or indirectly increase nutrient contents and availability and decrease nutrient leaching, which are known as mechanisms for the increase of soil fertility.

Thank you very much @Safa Abd Al Ameer Al-Zreejawi for introducing references with a detailed explanation of the soil fertility mechanisms.

Tea favour acidic soils. So it will be better if the biochar is added at a particular dose or at definite intervals with regular monitoring of physicochemical parameters including C/N ratio. Such attempt can lead to a better conclusion

Elaheh, is there any report of increase in accumulation of secondary metabolites vis- a- vis suppression grey blight disease as a function of biochar application. The biggest problem with biochar is how to domesticate biochar use for small tea gardens ....if someone can further throw light .

A low temperature pyrolysis lowers the pH of the end product.

When dealing with tea an acidophilic species using the low temperature pyrolysis and adding a acidulant like ammonia sulfate or sulfure can be useful for producing a biochar product tion scidiity needed for the beverage crop.

Soil acidification in Chinese tea plantations

Author links open overlay panelPengYanaLiangquanWubDonghuiWangaJianyuFuaChenShenaXinLiaLipingZhangaLanZhangaLichaoFancHanWenyana

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136963Get rights and content

Highlights

•

In China, the average soil pH of tea plantation was 4.68 nationally and ranged from 3.96 to 5.48 in different provinces.

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Compared with cereal and cash crops systems, the greatest soil acidification occurred in the tea system.

•

Organic management is a way to prevent soil acidification in tea plantations.

Abstract

Soil acidification is a major problem in intensive agricultural systems and is becoming increasingly serious. Most research has reported the soil acidification of cereal crops, forests, and grasslands. However, there is no information about soil acidification under tea cultivation on a national scale. Therefore, we conducted a nationwide survey of soil acidification in the major tea-planting areas of China and used two nationwide surveys in three Chinese counties to evaluate changes in soil acidity over the past 20–30 years. Finally, the acidity of soil from forests and traditional and organic tea plantations was compared to evaluate the effects of agricultural management on soil acidification in tea plantations. Our results show that: (1) the average soil pH was 4.68 nationally and ranged from 3.96 to 5.48 in different provinces. Overall, 46.0% of the soil samples had a pH

Thank you dear @Ram Kumar Gangly, @Anoop Kumar Srivastava and @Paul Reed Hepperly for raising good points and references regarding acidification of tea cultivation.

Dear Dr.@Elaheh Daghighi Masouleh

An interesting topic and question.

Dear Dr Elaheh Daghighi

See kindly the following useful RG link: Article Biochar stimulates tea growth by improving nutrients in acidic soil

Kindly see also the following very good RG link: Article Biochar to improve soil fertility. A review

Also check please the following very good RG link: Article A Review on Current Status of Biochar Uses in Agriculture

Thank you @Aref Wazwaz for recommending useful links.

In a study, after 11 months of biochar application, the pH of the six biochar treatment groups increased from 0.17 to 1.15. The results showed that the addition of biochars would help maintain the soil pH. ... These results indicated that the tea garden soil pH environments would be improved with the addition of swine-manure biochars. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490741/

Check https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350192905_Biochar_stimulates_tea_growth_by_improving_nutrients_in_acidic_soil

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/65070

Thank you @Chinaza Godswill Awuchi for your recommendations. Happy new year.

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@Waleed Abdalameer please write your answer in English.

Kindly check on this review

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/76192

Is there any report of influence of biochar on tea diseases, especially Phytophthora..??

Thank you @Kiprotich Kiptum for your chapter suggestion.

Dear @Anoop Kumar Srivastava, there are many works have been done in the case of controlling plant diseases by biochar amelioration, even some refers to phytophthora, but I do not see any directly on tea plant, or maybe we need a deeper search. Hereby, I put the links to some of these publications maybe interesting for all colleagues to give any evidence on controlling plant fungal diseases by biochar application.

Dear @Elaheh Daghighi Masouleh I think, following links throw light on soil biodiversity at low pH:

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/65070

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-016-0372-z#Sec12

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.01321/full

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721038298

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095311918621483

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347846634_Does_biochar_improve_all_soil_ecosystem_services

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321313933_Improvement_of_acidic_soil_properties_by_biochar_from_fast_pyrolysis

Thank you @Arbind K.Choudhary for suggesting links towards soil biodiversity in Acidic situations.

Dear colleagues, I find this paper linked below about the impact of old century biochar on taxonomic and functional traits of Collembola communities, very useful regarding this question. In which, there is evidenced a little impact of biochar, but in contrast a large impact of habitats across different land-uses.

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/65070