TY - JOUR
T1 - Bacterial Alginate-Based Hydrogel Reduces Hydro-Mechanical Soil-Related Problems in Agriculture Facing Climate Change
AU - Barrientos-Sanhueza, Cesar
AU - Cargnino-Cisternas, Danny
AU - Díaz-Barrera, Alvaro
AU - Cuneo, Italo F.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: This study was carried out with funding from the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), within the Fondecyt grant No11180102. Authors gratefully acknowledges the “Research Nucleus on Climate Change and Protected Agriculture”, VRIEA-PUCV grant 039.426/2020 and VRIEA-PUCV grant 039.380/2021. C.B.S. was funded by the ANID doctoral scholarship grant Nº21210869.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authorsLicensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/3/1
Y1 - 2022/3/1
N2 - Agricultural systems are facing the negative impacts of erosion and water scarcity, directly impacting the hydro-mechanical behavior of soil aggregation. Several technologies have been proposed to reduce hydro-mechanical soil-related problems in agriculture. Biopolymer-based hydrogels have been reported to be a great tool to tackle these problems in soils. In this study, we investigated the hydro-mechanical behavior of different soils media treated with Ca-bacterial alginate hydrogel. We used an unconfined uniaxial compression test, aggregate stability test and hydraulic conductivity measurements to investigate the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of treated soils media. Our results from unconfined uniaxial compression test showed that yield stress (i.e., strength) increased in treated soils with higher kaolinite and water content (i.e., HCM3), compared with untreated coarse quartz sand (i.e., CM1). Furthermore, we found that temperature is an important factor in the gelation capacity of our hydrogel. At room temperature, HCM3 displayed the higher aggregate stability, almost 5.5-fold compared with treated coarse quartz sand (HCM1), while this differential response was not sustained at warm temperature. In general, the addition of different quantities of kaolinite decreased the saturated hydraulic conductivity for all treatments. Finally, bright field microscopy imaging represents the soil media matrix between sand and clay particles with Ca-bacterial alginate hydrogel that modify the hydro-mechanical behavior of different soils media. The results of this study could be helpful for the soil-related problems in agriculture facing the negative effects of climate change.
AB - Agricultural systems are facing the negative impacts of erosion and water scarcity, directly impacting the hydro-mechanical behavior of soil aggregation. Several technologies have been proposed to reduce hydro-mechanical soil-related problems in agriculture. Biopolymer-based hydrogels have been reported to be a great tool to tackle these problems in soils. In this study, we investigated the hydro-mechanical behavior of different soils media treated with Ca-bacterial alginate hydrogel. We used an unconfined uniaxial compression test, aggregate stability test and hydraulic conductivity measurements to investigate the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of treated soils media. Our results from unconfined uniaxial compression test showed that yield stress (i.e., strength) increased in treated soils with higher kaolinite and water content (i.e., HCM3), compared with untreated coarse quartz sand (i.e., CM1). Furthermore, we found that temperature is an important factor in the gelation capacity of our hydrogel. At room temperature, HCM3 displayed the higher aggregate stability, almost 5.5-fold compared with treated coarse quartz sand (HCM1), while this differential response was not sustained at warm temperature. In general, the addition of different quantities of kaolinite decreased the saturated hydraulic conductivity for all treatments. Finally, bright field microscopy imaging represents the soil media matrix between sand and clay particles with Ca-bacterial alginate hydrogel that modify the hydro-mechanical behavior of different soils media. The results of this study could be helpful for the soil-related problems in agriculture facing the negative effects of climate change.
KW - Agriculture
KW - Bacterial alginate
KW - Climate change
KW - Hydrogel
KW - Soil hydro-mechanical behavior
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125591054&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/polym14050922
DO - 10.3390/polym14050922
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85125591054
VL - 14
JO - Polymers
JF - Polymers
SN - 2073-4360
IS - 5
M1 - 922
ER -