Abstract:

A bare barley planting experiment was carried out from November 2023 to May 2024 in the coastal reclamation area of Nantong, Jiangsu Province to study the effects of different amounts of silicon fertilizer on soil fertility and yield and quality of bare barley, with ‘Suluomai No.2’ as the test variety. Five different silicon fertilizer application rates were set up in the treatment, including CK, SiF1, SiF2, SiF3 and SiF4 (0, 75, 150 and 225 kg/hm²). The results showed that: (1) compared with CK, the soil available phosphorus concentration increased by 19.31%, 18.99%, 23.16% and 17.71% respectively under SiF1, SiF2, SiF3 and SiF4 (P<0.05). The concentrations of soil soluble organic carbon and easily oxidizable organic carbon increased by 11.46% and 11.61%, 11.77% and 8.39%, 14.21% and 9.03%, respectively under SiF2, SiF3, and SiF4 treatments (P<0.05); there were no significant differences in the concentrations of total carbon, organic carbon, microbial biomass carbon, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, and nitrate nitrogen under different silicon fertilizer application treatments (P>0.05). (2) Compared with CK, the yield of bare barley in the coastal tidal flat area increased by 17.02% under SiF2 treatment (P<0.05), and the β-glucan content of bare barley under SiF2 treatment increased the most. In terms of yield components, the number of spikes increased significantly under SiF2 and SiF3 treatments, while there were no significant changes in thousand-grain weight and the number of grains per spike under different silicon fertilizer treatments. In conclusion, the soil fertility of coastal tidal flat was improved by increasing the application of silicon fertilizer, and the yield and β-glucan content of bare barley in coastal tidal flat area were increased by increasing the appropriate amount of silicon fertilizer (150 kg/hm²).

Key words: coastal tidal flat, silicon fertilizer, soil fertility, bare barley, yield and quality