What role does soil organic matter play in crop production?

What role does soil organic matter play in crop production?

Organic matter plays a significant role in crop production and soil health by improving physical, chemical, and biological functions in the soil. Increasing levels of organic matter aids in soil structure, water-holding capacity, nutrient mineralization, biological activity, and water and air infiltration rates.

What is soil organic matter and its importance on agriculture?

Soil organic matter is important in relation to soil fertility, sustainable agricultural systems, and crop productivity, and there is concern about the level of organic matter in many soils, particularly with respect to global warming.

What are benefits of organic matter?

Organic matter serves as a reservoir of nutrients and water in the soil, aids in reducing compaction and surface crusting, and increases water infiltration into the soil. Yet it’s often ignored and neglected.

What is organic matter for plants?

Organic matter includes plants and animals that are alive, dead, or in some stage of decomposition. Organic matter is a major contributor to soil health. Most garden and landscape plants benefit from increases in soil organic matter.

What is organic matter Agriculture?

1. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Soil organic matter is the fraction of the soil that consists of plant or animal tissue in various stages of breakdown (decomposition). Most of our productive agricultural soils have between 3 and 6% organic matter.

Why is organic matter important?

In addition to providing nutrients and habitat to organisms living in the soil, organic matter also binds soil particles into aggregates and improves the water holding capacity of soil. However, even in small amounts, organic matter is very important. Soil is a living, dynamic ecosystem.

Why do we use organic matter?

Organic matter causes soil to clump and form soil aggregates, which improves soil structure. With better soil structure, permeability (infiltration of water through the soil) improves, in turn improving the soil’s ability to take up and hold water.

How is organic matter important to plants?

Organic matter improves soil structure, which results in increased water infiltration following rains and increased water-holding capacity of the soil; it also enhances root growth into more permeable soil. This results in better plant health and allows more movement of mobile nutrients (such as nitrates) to the root.

Why is soil organic matter so important to plants?

This active fraction of soil organic matter is the main supply of food for various organisms—microorganisms, insects and earthworms—living in the soil. As organic materials are decomposed by the “living,” they release many of the nutrients needed by plants.

Which is a good source of organic matter?

Active organic matter contains nutrients that are easy for microbes to digest and use for their metabolism. These materials are quite young – usually less than five years in the soil. Fresh crop residues are a good source of active organic matter.

Why are microorganisms so important to organic matter?

Microorganisms, earthworms and insects feed on plant residues and manures for energy and nutrition, and in the process they mix organic matter into the mineral soil. In addition, they recycle plant nutrients. Sticky substances on the skin of earthworms and other materials produced by fungi help bind particles together.

Where is the highest amount of organic matter in soil?

Soils in the Northern Great Plains of the United States have some of the highest organic matter levels of all soils that aren’t Histosols, commonly ranging from 4-7% of the total soil mass (Figure 2). Figure 2: Soil organic matter content across the United States. Source: Hargrove & Luxmore (1988).