Biovailability of copper and zinc in pig and cattle slurries

Slurry is an important source of macronutrients, micro-nutrients and organic matter. Despite the considerable fertilizer value of slurry, it may be abundant in amounts of copper and zinc originating from dietary. The study presents quantitative changes in copper and zinc in individual slurries (pig and cattle slurries). The bioavailability of copper and zinc was estimated on the basis of amounts of the metals in isolated fractions using the sequential extraction method. Sequential techniques identify fractions which describe different connections of metals with the compost solid phase beginning with those that are easiest soluble up to those that dissolve with the greatest difficulties.Pig slurry was characterized by 2-fold higher amounts of copper and zinc in comparison to the levels detected in cattle slurries. Quantitative changes of the elements in the sequentially isolated fractions of analyzed slurries differed. First of all, this was dependent on the chemical character of a given metal, followed by the animal species, or the type of management. Irrespective of the type of slurry, 40-56% of the total amounts of copper were found in hardly available combinations, while available copper forms accounted for only 6.6–10.9%. Zinc was found predominantly in com-binations with iron and manganese oxides which, irrespective of the tested slurry, ranged from 130.64 mg·kg-1 to 293.60 mg·kg-1. Bioavailable metal contents, potentially introduced to soil with slurry doses, calculated as 170 kg total N/ha/year, ranged from 63.6 to 124.5 g for copper, and from 349.5 to 696.4 g for zinc. The estimated amounts of metal inputs to agricultural land demonstrate that soils are potentially at risk of heavy metal accumulation from the application of pig and cattle slurries.