Can humic products substantially improve ecosystem quality and economic yield?

摘要

Humic products have been used in cropland agriculture for several decades,but lack of widespread credibility has restricted their use to small proportions of farmers.Key knowledge gaps concern spatial and temporal variability in their field efficacy,a mechanistic explanation for plant responses to humic products,industry-wide measures for quality control of product formation and sale,and the lack of long-term field trials to evaluate soil health responses.As these gaps are closed,we believe humic products will serve multiple roles in agriculture and land management.These roles could include enhanced crop economic yield--especially in the presence of environmental stresses,improved soil health,and multiple contributions to better environmental quality,including diminished flow of N and P into the atmosphere and water bodies,oil spill remediation,and decontamination of heavy metals and anthropogenic organic pollutants.We call for greater coupling of the basic research needed to verify these concepts with field-scale application of humic products.