Biography:

Dalila Trupiano is an Associate Professor in Botany at Department of Biosciences and Territory-University of Molise (Italy). Her research activities are carried out in the Plant Biology Laboratory, narrowing down its focus on plant environment interactions (from the cellular up to the organism level), by using morphological, anatomical, physiological, and molecular analyses. Furthermore, comparative proteomic analysis and phytohormones profiling, coupled by bioinformatics-modelling pipelines, are used in order to comprehend factors involved in plants response to different stresses. Innovative phenotyping image-based approaches are being developed to predict plant growth in different growth conditions (SCOPUS ID: 24559477600; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8587-9971).

Abstract:
Importance of Application Rates of Compost and Biochar on Soil Metal (Loid) Immobilization and Plant Growth
In this study, we investigated the effect of different rates of compost (20%, 40%, 60% w/w) in combination with biochar (0%, 2%, 6% w/w) on soil physiochemical properties and the mobility of arsenic (As) and lead (Pb), in addition to the ability of Arabidopsis thaliana (ecotype Columbia-0) to grow and accumulate metal(loid)s. All modalities improved pH and electrical conductivity, stabilized Pb and mobilized As, but only the mixture of 20% compost and 6% biochar improved plant growth. Plants in all modalities showed a significant reduction in root and shoot Pb concentrations compared to the non-amended technosol. In contrast, As shoot concentration was significantly lower for plants in all modalities (except with 20% compost only) compared to non-amended technosol. For root As, plants in all modalities showed a significant reduction except for the mixture of 20% compost and 6% biochar. Overall, our results indicate that the mixture of 20% compost with 6% biochar emerged as the optimum combination for improving plant growth and As uptake, making it the possible optimum combination for enhancing the efficiency of land reclamation strategies. These findings provide a foundation for further research on the long-term effects and potential applications of the compost-biochar combination in improving soil quality.