IPB’s Department of Soil Science & Land Resources recently completed a 10-week controlled evaluation of our corn cob biochar on Regosol — sandy, acidic, nutrient-poor soil. Completely randomized design, five treatments, five replications.
Water-holding capacity: statistically significant improvement from 10 t/ha upward.
Potassium retention: statistically significant improvement at every dose, scaling linearly from 5 to 20 t/ha.
pH correction: consistent across all treatments.
The 10 t/ha threshold matters to us practically. It’s the minimum dose where both claimed functions — water retention and nutrient retention — are confirmed by the statistics for this particular product. Below that, nutrient retention still improves meaningfully, but water-holding capacity doesn’t yet cross the significance line.
A note on scope: these results are specific to our BEN Agro product. Biochar properties vary enormously with feedstock, pyrolysis conditions, and post-processing. We’d encourage caution in generalizing any single study across the full spectrum of biochar products.
This study was conducted under the Permentan No. 1/2019 framework with methodology designed by IPB.
