ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Nutrition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1624346
This article is part of the Research TopicGreen Growth: Innovations in Plant Science for Biostimulant ApplicationsView all 6 articles
Elevation-Induced Changes in Soil Sulfur Availability in Tea Plantations
Provisionally accepted
Hong Wang1
Chen Qian1Shaghaleh Hiba2Jianfei Wang1Xiaoliang Li1
Cece Qiao1
Sumei Duan1*Yousef Alhaj Hamoud2*- 1Anhui Science and Technology University, Chuzhou, China
- 2Hohai University, Nanjing, nanjing, China
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Chinese tea plantations, as the world's leading tea producers, face escalating challenges such as soil acidification and nutrient management. Investigating soil nutrient variations along elevation gradients is crucial. Despite extensive research on macronutrients like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, the role of available sulfur (AS), tightly interlinked with other nutrients, remains underexplored. This study focuses on available S dynamics in Huoshan County, Anhui Province, utilizing soil and litter samples collected from tea plantations at diverse elevations. The results revealed non-linear variations of soil AS with altitude and principal component (PC1) of other soil properties, significantly influencing tea plantation segregation by elevation. Available S exhibited heightened sensitivity to elevation changes compared to other nutrients, underscoring its pivotal role in tea plantation management and soil nutrient cycling. Furthermore, tea plantation dimensions notably decreased with increasing altitude. These findings emphasize the importance of available S in tea garden nutrient management and suggest its crucial consideration in future research and management endeavors. The non-linear correlation between available S and PC1 highlights the responsiveness of available S to elevation variations, emphasizing its significance in tea plantation soil dynamics. This study offers valuable insights into optimizing nutrient management strategies in tea plantations amidst elevation gradients.
Keywords: tea plantation, Cycling process, stoichiometry, Available sulfur, soil nutrient 1
Received: 07 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Qian, Hiba, Wang, Li, Qiao, Duan and Hamoud. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sumei Duan, Anhui Science and Technology University, Chuzhou, China
Yousef Alhaj Hamoud, Hohai University, Nanjing, nanjing, China
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