Effect of Biochar Application on Soil Health and its Potential Risks to Flue-cured Tobacco Production

In recent years, biochar has attracted a lot of attention from researchers over the world. Many studies have shown that biochar owns characteristics of stability, porosity, and adsorption, thus it can improve soil nutrient availability, energize soil microbes, improve soil structure, increase carbon sequestration, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce soil heavy metals and other harmful organic contaminants by binding them in soils. Biochar thus is a very promising new fertilizer and soil amendment. However, biochar also has the potential to bring heavy metals, organic contaminants and some undesired influence into soils, depending on the feedstocks and pyrolysis temperature, which may produce some soil health and flue-cured production problems. A comprehensive and systematic understanding on these issues does not exist in the current literature. Therefore, this review summaries the current knowledge in the effect of biochar application on soil health and its potential risks to flue-cured tobacco production based on recent experiment results, so as to provide some theoretical basis for biochar extension.