Poor soils lose carbon regardless of crop residue and nitrogen inputs

Read the full story from the University of Illinois.

Let’s say you’re a corn grower farming on low-fertility soil. How do you go about making that soil healthier and more fertile? Many farmers think if they add plenty of nitrogen fertilizer, that nutrient, along with carbon, will be stored in the soil as organic matter when microbes decompose crop residue. But new research from the University of Illinois suggests those efforts might not work for poor soils. 

The new study, published in the Soil Science Society of America Journal, compared corn residue decomposition in high- and low-fertility, with and without nitrogen fertilizers. The results came as a surprise.