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TECHNICAL REPORTS

Waste Management

The Impact of Alum Addition on Organic P Transformations in Poultry Litter and Litter-Amended Soil

^a Animal Waste Management Research Unit, USDA-ARS, 230 Bennett Lane, Bowling Green, KY 42104
^b Dep. of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State Univ., 368 Agricultural Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078-6028
^c Dep. of Environmental Science and Technology, Univ. of Maryland, 0214 H.J. Patterson Hall, College Park, MD 20742

^* Corresponding author (Jason.warren{at}ars.usda.gov).

Received for publication May 11, 2007. Poultry litter treatment with alum (Al₂(SO₄)₃·18H₂O) lowers litter phosphorus (P) solubility and therefore can lower litter P release to runoff after land application. Lower P solubility in litter is generally attributed to aluminum-phosphate complex formation. However, recent studies suggest that alum additions to poultry litter may influence organic P mineralization. Therefore, alum-treated and untreated litters were incubated for 93 d to assess organic P transformations during simulated storage. A 62-d soil incubation was also conducted to determine the fate of incorporated litter organic P, which included alum-treated litter, untreated litter, KH₂PO₄ applied at 60 mg P kg^–1 of soil, and an unamended control. Liquid-state ³¹P nuclear magnetic resonance indicated that phytic acid was the only organic P compound present, accounting for 50 and 45% of the total P in untreated and alum-treated litters, respectively, before incubation and declined to 9 and 37% after 93 d of storage-simulating incubation. Sequential fractionation of litters showed that alum addition to litter transformed 30% of the organic P from the 1.0 mol L^–1 HCl to the 0.1 mol L^–1 NaOH extractable fraction and that both organic P fractions were more persistent in alum-treated litter compared with untreated litter. The soil incubation revealed that 0.1 mol L^–1 NaOH–extractable organic P was more recalcitrant after mixing than was the 1.0 mol L^–1 HCl–extractable organic P. Thus, adding alum to litter inhibits organic P mineralization during storage and promotes the formation of alkaline extractable organic P that sustains lower P solubility in the soil environment.

Abbreviations: EDTA, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (C₁₀H₁₆N₂O₈) • NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance • ICP–OES, inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectroscopy

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