Liqiang Cui

Variation of bacterial and fungal community structures in the rhizosphere of hybrid and standard rice cultivars and linkage to CO2 flux.

A field experiment was conducted with cultivation of hybrid and conventional cultivars in a rice paddy from China. Rhizosphere soil was sampled and CO(2) flux was measured at tillering (S1), grain filling (S2) and ripening (S3) across the growth stages. Microbial community structure, abundance and activity were analyzed using a combination of functional (enzymes) and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and real-time PCR molecular approaches. Invertase and urease activities, total microbial biomass carbon, bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal internal transcribed spacer rRNA gene copies were found to be the highest at S2 under both cultivars, being greater under the hybrid cultivar than under the conventional cultivar across the stages. Moreover, the CO(2) flux was 11%, 16% and 25% higher under the hybrid cultivar than under the conventional cultivar at S1, S2 and S3, respectively. Principal component analyses of the PCR-DGGE profile revealed a significant difference between conventional and hybrid cultivars across growth stages. Sequencing DGGE bands of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene showed that a particular bacterial group of Alphaproteobacteria was enhanced and several distinct operational taxonomic units markedly resembled Ascomycota under the hybrid cultivar. These illustrate a significant selection of a particular group of bacteria and fungi of the hybrid cultivar. However, the potential impacts of these cultivar effects in soil C and N cycling deserve further field studies.

Effects of chemical oxidation on surface oxygen-containing functional groups and adsorption behavior of biochar

Biochar is a beneficial soil amendment but the changes in its surface properties during the aging process, especially the oxygen-containing functional groups and the associated adsorption behaviors, are not well documented. In this paper, the aged wheat straw biochar was simulated by chemical oxidation with HNO3-H2SO4 and NaOH-H2O2 systems. Characterization results showed that carbon loss and oxygen incorporation ran throughout the aging process. Surface oxygen-containing functional groups were found to be increased in all treated biochars, especially for carboxyl. Much more developed mesopores were observed in aging biochar, specific surface area was increased by 126% for biochar treated with NaOH-H2O2, and 226% for biochar treated with 40% of HNO3-H2SO4. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that the increasing oxygen-containing functional groups led to 14% and 30% mass loss by treating biochar with alkali and acid, respectively. The improved biochar surface through the increase of oxygen-containing functional groups enhanced the cadmium sorption capacity, and the sorption capacity increased by 21.2% in maximum. Roughed surface from oxidation was another reason for increasing cadmium adsorption. Results indicated that the adsorption performance of biochar on pollutant would be changed during aging process along with the changing surface properties.

Adsorption Behaviour of Pymetrozine by Four Kinds of Biochar from Aqueous Solution

A laboratory experiment was performed to investigate the potential of biochar (BC) as an adsorbent for removing pymetrozine from aqueous solution. The adsorption data were well described by Langmuir isotherm, with maximum pymetrozine adsorption capacities of 13.8, 20.6, 11.0 and 18.8 mg g−1 for bush-, wheat straw-, peanut- and corn-derived BC in a single solution at 25 °C, respectively. The functional groups of BCs were –NH (1628.25 cm−1), –OH (3443.78 cm−1), –PO4 (1089.2 cm−1) and –C–Cl (769.23 cm−1), which were responsible for binding pymetrozine. The adsorption capacity of BC was increased by 7.2–106.4% at different solution pH (1, 3, 5 and 7). The removal efficiency increased with the addition of BCs and over 70% pymetrozine removal was observed upon addition of up to 8 g l−1. The rate of pymetrozine adsorption was fast, with 50–80% of the adsorption occurring in the first 120 minutes, followed by a much slower approach to equilibrium. The ΔG° values decreased (increasingly negative) from −165.3% to 235.9% at 298 K compared with 318 K for the adsorption of pymetrozine onto different BCs in a single solution. The study results indicate that plant residue- or agricultural waste-derived BC can act as an effective surface sorbent, but their ability to treat mixed waste streams needs to be carefully evaluated on an individual basis.

Colorimetric Determination of Hypochlorite Based on the Oxidative Leaching of Gold Nanorods

Hypochlorite plays a critical role in killing microorganisms in the water. However, it can also cause cardiovascular diseases, neuron degeneration, and cancer to humans. Although traditional methods feature excellent sensitivity and reliability in detecting hypochlorite, the expensive instruments and strict determination conditions have limited their application in environmental analysis to some extent. Thus, it is necessary and urgent to propose a cheap, facile, and quick analytical assay for hypochlorite. This paper proposes a colorimetric assay for hypochlorite utilizing gold nanorods (AuNRs) as the nanoreactor and color reader. The AuNRs were acquired via a reported seed-mediated method. NaClO with strong oxidation property can cause the etching of gold from the longitudinal tips of AuNRs, which could shorten the aspect ratio of AuNRs, decrease the absorption in the UV–Vis spectrum and also induce the solution color changing from red to pale yellow. Thus, according to the solution color change and the absorbance of longitudinal surface plasmon resonance of AuNRs, we established the calibration curve of NaClO within 0.08 μM to 125 μM (∆Abs = 0.0547 + 0.004 CNaClO, R2 = 0.9631). Compared to traditional method, we obtained the conversion formula between the concentration of residual-chlorine in tap water and the concentration of hypochlorite detected by the proposed colorimetric assay, which is Cresidual-chlorine = 0.24 CNaClO. Finally, the real application of the colorimetric assay in tap water was successfully performed, and the accuracy of the colorimetric method can reach from −6.78% to +8.53%.