Pedosphere 35(1): 295--298, 2025
ISSN 1002-0160/CN 32-1315/P
©2025 Soil Science Society of China
Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press
| Biochars improve agricultural production: The evidence base is limited |
Vincent CHAPLOT1,2 , Philippe BAVEYE3, René GUENON4, Elie LE GUYADER5, Budiman MINASNY6, Anoop Kumar SRIVASTAVA7 |
1 Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat, Expérimentations et Approches Numériques, UMR 7159, IRD-CNRS-UPMC-MNHN, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Paris 75004 (France)
2 SAEES, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 3209 (South Africa)
3 Saint Loup Research Institute, 7 rue des chênes, La Grande Romelière, Saint Loup Lamairé 79600 (France)
4 EPHOR, Institut Agro, Angers 49045 (France)
5 Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, GEGENAA 3795, CREA, 2 Esplanade Roland Garros, Reims 51100 (France)
6 Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, the University of Sydney, Sydney 2006 (Australia)
7 ICAR-Central Citrus Research Institute, Nagpur 440033 (India) |
| Corresponding Author:Vincent CHAPLOT |
| ABSTRACT |
| Biochar application to soil is commonly recognized to improve soil fertility and consequently biomass and food production sustainably. We re-examined the robustness of the underlying data and found that, of the 12 000+ publications on “biochar and agriculture” used in meta-studies, only 109 Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) papers (or 0.9%) provide experimental data on the impacts on crop yield and/or biomass production. Our analysis revealed that none (0%) of these studies compared a biochar treatment to a treatment adding to the soil the same amounts of easily accessible nutrients as found in biochar, 0.9% evaluated the toxicity of biochar, and 5.5% considered at least two cropping cycles after a single biochar application, which in all cases are major shortcomings. Finally, when computed only for agricultural soils (n = 65), the mean biomass or grain yield gain, which was 16.1% (median at 7.1%) for all available experiments, decreased to -0.64% (median at 5.2%). Consequently, the underlying evidence base to support biochar application in agricultural soils to enhance biomass production and grain yield is so far limited. |
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| Citation: Chaplot V, Baveye P, Guénon R, Le Guyader E, Minasny B, Srivastava A K. 2025. Biochars improve agricultural production: The evidence base is limited. Pedosphere. 35(1): 295-298. |
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