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Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils

Chitosan has become increasingly applied in agriculture worldwide, thus entering the soil environment. We hypothesized that chitosan should affect the water stability of soil. Since this problem has not been studied to date, we examined, for the first time, the influence of chitosan on the water sta...

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Autores principales: Adamczuk, Agnieszka, Kercheva, Milena, Hristova, Mariana, Jozefaciuk, Grzegorz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706192/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34947320
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma14247724
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author Adamczuk, Agnieszka
Kercheva, Milena
Hristova, Mariana
Jozefaciuk, Grzegorz
author_facet Adamczuk, Agnieszka
Kercheva, Milena
Hristova, Mariana
Jozefaciuk, Grzegorz
author_sort Adamczuk, Agnieszka
collection PubMed
description Chitosan has become increasingly applied in agriculture worldwide, thus entering the soil environment. We hypothesized that chitosan should affect the water stability of soil. Since this problem has not been studied to date, we examined, for the first time, the influence of chitosan on the water stability and wettability of soil aggregates. The aggregates were prepared from four soils with various properties amended with different amounts of two kinds of powdered chitosan, and subjected to 1 and/or 10 wetting–drying cycles. The water stability was measured by monitoring air bubbling after aggregate immersion in water, and the wettability was measured by a water drop penetration test. The biopolymer with a lower molecular mass, lower viscosity, and higher degree of deacetylation was more effective in increasing the water stability of the soil than the biopolymer with a higher molecular mass, higher viscosity, and lower deacetylation degree. After a single wetting-drying cycle, the water stability of the soil aggregates containing chitosan with a higher molecular mass was generally lower than that of the soil; after ten wetting–drying cycles, the water stability increased 1.5 to 20 times depending on the soil. The addition of low-molecular-mass chitosan after a single wetting-drying cycle caused the water stability to become one to two hundred times higher than that of the soil. A trial to find out which soil properties (pH, C and N content, bulk density, porosity, and particle size distribution) are responsible for the effectiveness of chitosan action was not successful, and this will be the objective of further studies.
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spelling pubmed-87061922021-12-25 Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils Adamczuk, Agnieszka Kercheva, Milena Hristova, Mariana Jozefaciuk, Grzegorz Materials (Basel) Article Chitosan has become increasingly applied in agriculture worldwide, thus entering the soil environment. We hypothesized that chitosan should affect the water stability of soil. Since this problem has not been studied to date, we examined, for the first time, the influence of chitosan on the water stability and wettability of soil aggregates. The aggregates were prepared from four soils with various properties amended with different amounts of two kinds of powdered chitosan, and subjected to 1 and/or 10 wetting–drying cycles. The water stability was measured by monitoring air bubbling after aggregate immersion in water, and the wettability was measured by a water drop penetration test. The biopolymer with a lower molecular mass, lower viscosity, and higher degree of deacetylation was more effective in increasing the water stability of the soil than the biopolymer with a higher molecular mass, higher viscosity, and lower deacetylation degree. After a single wetting-drying cycle, the water stability of the soil aggregates containing chitosan with a higher molecular mass was generally lower than that of the soil; after ten wetting–drying cycles, the water stability increased 1.5 to 20 times depending on the soil. The addition of low-molecular-mass chitosan after a single wetting-drying cycle caused the water stability to become one to two hundred times higher than that of the soil. A trial to find out which soil properties (pH, C and N content, bulk density, porosity, and particle size distribution) are responsible for the effectiveness of chitosan action was not successful, and this will be the objective of further studies. MDPI 2021-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8706192/ /pubmed/34947320 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma14247724 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Adamczuk, Agnieszka
Kercheva, Milena
Hristova, Mariana
Jozefaciuk, Grzegorz
Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title_full Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title_fullStr Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title_full_unstemmed Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title_short Impact of Chitosan on Water Stability and Wettability of Soils
title_sort impact of chitosan on water stability and wettability of soils
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706192/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34947320
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma14247724
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