5. Biochars and Its Implications on Soil Health and Crop Productivity in Semi-Arid Environment

Land degradation and climate change are important associated processes necessitating appropriate management options to solve alarming food security threats in developing nations. Biochar produced from plant matter and applied to the soil has become increasingly recognized to address multiple contemporary concerns, such as agricultural productivity and contaminated ecosystem amelioration, primarily by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and improving soil health. Biochar is an anaerobic pyrolysis product derived from organic material, resistant to easy degradation and stored carbon in the long-term in the terrestrial ecosystem and capable of reducing greenhouse emission from soil to the atmosphere. Further, it has the potential to adsorb and degrade heavy metals accumulated in the industrial and contaminant sites. The different source of biochars and graded levels of application has positive and negative effects on crop yield under different soil types. Most of the results in biochar are a greenhouse and laboratory-based experiment and lack of field experimental evidence in the semiarid environment. In this chapter need for biochar production, characterization, soil health changes, environmental clean-up potential, and crop yield dynamics under changing climate and research on biochar in the near future will be focused on sustainable crop and environmental management.