ABSTRACT Precision agriculture (PA) practices in banana production chains have received limited attention. Based on the literature, the investigation of spatial and temporal variability in banana orchards should be customized according to the characteristics of the crop. This study aimed to develop and evaluate methods for mapping the spatial variability in soil properties at row- and clump-resolutions in a banana orchard, and to generate row and clump maps with high-spatial-resolution soil property information. A banana orchard was investigated, and georeferenced […]

ABSTRACT Establishing the number of samples required to determine values of soil physical properties ultimately results in optimization of labor and allows better representation of such attributes. The objective of this study was to analyze the spatial variability of soil physical properties in a Conilon coffee field and propose a soil sampling method better attuned to conditions of the management system. The experiment was performed in a Conilon coffee field in Espírito Santo state, Brazil, under a 3.0 × 2.0 […]

ABSTRACT In no-tillage (NT) systems, there is no plowed layer since the soil is not tilled. Thus, the soil layer for fertility evaluation can be defined as the one in which the fertility indices are affected by the surface application of lime and fertilizers and soil properties have the closest relationship with crop yields. The objective of this study was to determine the most appropriate soil layer under long-term NT for sampling for fertility evaluation in the South-Central region of […]

Soil sampling should provide an accurate representation of a given area so that recommendations for amendments of soil acidity, fertilization and soil conservation may be drafted to increase yield and improve the use of inputs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the variability of soil fertility properties of Oxisols in areas planted to sugarcane in the State of Goias, Brazil. Two areas of approximately 8,100 m2 each were selected, representing two fields of the Goiasa sugarcane mill in […]

Information on the spatial structure of soil physical and structural properties is needed to evaluate the soil quality. The purpose of this study was to investigate the spatial behavior of preconsolidation pressure and soil moisture in six transects, three selected along and three across coffee rows, at three different sites under different tillage management systems. The study was carried out on a farm, in Patrocinio, state of Minas Gerais, in the Southeast of Brazil (18 º 59 ‘ 15 ” […]

Navigation recipients of the global positioning system (GPS), widely used in the agricultural sector, in general, have a positional accuracy of < 10.0 m. In systematic soil sampling, sub-samples should be collected within a radius of not more than three meters from the central georeferenced point. In this technical note, precision and accuracy of this equipment were contrasted with the requirements of systematic soil sampling. An area of approximately 17 ha, on Campus I of the University of Passo Fundo, […]

In the areas where irrigated rice is grown in the south of Brazil, few studies have been carried out to investigate the spatial variability structure of soil properties and to establish new forms of soil management as well as determine soil corrective and fertilizer applications. In this sense, this study had the objective of evaluating the spatial variability of chemical, physical and biological soil properties in a lowland area under irrigated rice cultivation in the conventional till system. For this […]

Fertilizer application in the sowing rows does not necessarily increase crop yields, but it does increase the variability of the soil chemical properties, particularly of the nutrients P and K. This variability is greater in the no-tillage system because there is no homogenization of the soil surface layer. This study evaluated the effect of fertilization strategies on soil chemical properties at distinct soil depths after three and six years from the beginning of the experiment in a Haplohumox under long-term […]

Preconsolidation pressure is currently used as a tool in the study of the soil compaction process. The purpose of this work was to determine the layout and number of samples required for the determination of the preconsolidation pressure (sp) in a Red Latosol, as well as to characterize its variability and spatial distribution using classical statistics and geostatistics parameters. The study was carried out in an experimental farm area, in Lavras, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, conventionally tilled in the last […]

The spatial variability of some physical and chemical characteristics of a compound of soils under grapevine (Vitis vinifera-L) cultivation was studied in the county Vitória Brasil, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Main objective was research into the spatial dependence of these soil characteristics and their variability, frequency distribution and minimum number of soil subsamples for grapevine crop. Soil data were collected in grid sampling at 156 points, using geoestatistics for the data analysis. Highest variability was found for macroporosity (MA), […]