Arcot Yashwanth, Srinivas Ramya, Mu Minchen, Maghoumi Mahshad, Cisneros-Zevallos Luis, Akbulut Mustafa E S
Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, United States.
Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, United States.
ACS Omega. 2025 Aug 14;10(33):37583-37596. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.5c03952. eCollection 2025 Aug 26.
Recently, increasing frequency and severity of drought events have resulted in significant crop yield reductions worldwide, indicating the critical need for innovative agricultural water management strategies to enhance water use efficiency. Addressing this challenge, we present a novel approach involving the strategic placement of highly hydrophobic sand layers below the subrhizosphere. This method utilizes silica sand modified via a facile, single-step surface treatment, yielding a material with strong hydrophobicity, characterized by a static water contact angle of 133.0 ± 1.0°. Importantly, the modified sand demonstrated stability and retained its hydrophobic properties under simulated adverse agricultural conditions. Systematic investigations of the hydraulic properties revealed that the incorporation of these hydrophobic sand layers substantially controlled the vertical infiltration flux of irrigation water. Specifically, a hydrophobic sand layer with an areal density of 796.5 mg/cm extended the water infiltration time by a factor of approximately 5.5 relative to control soil columns, even following 14 days of sustained irrigation. This engineered impedance promotes saturation within the rhizosphere, thereby potentially enhancing the efficiency of root water uptake. Furthermore, experimental observations indicated a positive correlation between the presence of the hydrophobized subsoil layer and the retention of organic matter within the overlying soil matrix, suggesting ancillary benefits for long-term soil fertility maintenance. Consequently, deploying subrhizosphere hydrophobization using organosilanes as a preplanting soil conditioning treatment presents a potentially more applicable strategy for improving water conservation and soil health, particularly in water-scarce agricultural regions.
最近，干旱事件的频率和严重程度不断增加，导致全球农作物产量大幅下降，这表明迫切需要创新的农业水资源管理策略来提高用水效率。为应对这一挑战，我们提出了一种新方法，即在根际下层战略性地放置高度疏水的砂层。该方法利用通过简便的单步表面处理改性的硅砂，得到一种具有强疏水性的材料，其特征在于静态水接触角为133.0±1.0°。重要的是，改性砂在模拟的不利农业条件下表现出稳定性并保留了其疏水性能。对水力特性的系统研究表明，这些疏水砂层的加入大大控制了灌溉水的垂直入渗通量。具体而言，面密度为796.5 mg/cm的疏水砂层相对于对照土柱，即使在持续灌溉14天后，也将水入渗时间延长了约5.5倍。这种工程阻抗促进了根际内的饱和，从而有可能提高根系吸水效率。此外，实验观察表明，疏水化底土层的存在与上覆土壤基质中有机质的保留之间存在正相关关系，这表明对长期土壤肥力维持有附带益处。因此，使用有机硅烷作为种植前土壤改良处理来部署根际下层疏水化，对于改善水资源保护和土壤健康而言，是一种潜在更适用的策略，特别是在缺水的农业地区。
