Effect of arbuscular mycorrhiza and grass mulching on corn growth and soil water content in coal mining areas

Coal mining exacerbates drought stress and poor soil. How to improve the water use efficiency, promote plant growth and soil improvement has become the key to the field restoration. The soil type of the experimental area is aeolian sand soil, which is loose and has poor ability of water and fertilizer conservation. The experiment set up 4 treatments: control(CK), cover grass(F), inoculate arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi(M), cover grass combined with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi(FM), with 3 repetitions for each treatment, thus there were 12 communities in total. The results showed that the biomass and yield of maize could be effectively increased by inoculation, and the yield of inoculated maize was 13 % higher than that of the control group. The yield of maize can be increased effectively by combining with the treatment of bacteria. After grass mulching in May, the soil water content in that month was 30 % higher than that of the treatment without grass mulching. In September, the precipitation was less, the evaporation increased, the evaporation of water was effectively reduced by grass mulching, and the water retention was 37.5 % higher than that of the treatment without grass mulching.