ABSTRACT In sandy areas of Northern Shaanxi, after potato harvest, there are large areas of soil exposed to wind erosion from winter to spring, leading to degradation of soil quality. Planting cover crops in fallow fields is considered effective to improve soil biological properties; however, there is scarce study on the effect of winter cover crops on fallow soils in this region. In the study lasting from 2017 to 2019, four winter cover crops, i.e., alfalfa (AC), sweetclover (SC), winter […]

ABSTRACT Through the lack or non-use of conservationist criteria for adequate land use and management, the scarcity of natural resources becomes ever more evident. This study aimed to analyze the origin of the sediments in the Posses catchment, municipality of Extrema, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, throughout the fingerprinting technique and portable X-ray fluorescence. Samples from soils under agriculture, pasture, and roads; and from the subsoil of theses land uses were taken in a widespread and representative manner from the […]

ABSTRACT Soil salinity is a major abiotic stress on plant growth in coastal saline soil. The objective of this study was to screen the optimal combination of organic materials with beneficial bacteria for application under real field conditions to improve coastal saline soil. A two-factor pot experiment was carried out with corn in coastal saline soil for 26 days. In the naturally aerobic environment, a split-plot experiment was conducted with different rates of organic materials (organic fertilizer and mushroom residue) […]

ABSTRACT Soils originating from the Caiuá sandstone formation have low soil organic matter (SOM), clay content, and cation exchange capacity (CEC). The predominance of one component over the other might decisively influence the CEC of these soils. Particle size distribution and selective dissolution procedures associated to a suit of methods to determine the exchangeable capacity properties might clarify the relative importance of each soil component. The objective of this work was to evaluate the contribution of the different components of […]

ABSTRACT The overloading of soil with manure or mineral fertilizers enhances phosphorus (P) availability, promoting its loss to water bodies and increasing the risk of eutrophication. In this sense, the establishment of an environmental P threshold is a simple and useful tool to classify soils regards its risk of P losses. Here we propose a P-threshold for soils from the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) in Brazil, with the soil clay content as the principal variable of the […]

ABSTRACT Notwithstanding the importance of soil surveys, advances in digital soil mapping have mainly focused on mapping soil attributes or properties rather than developing digital maps of soil units or soil classes. The purpose of this research was to develop digital soil unit maps based on primary soil data collection in areas without previously collected soil information. The covariate variability, the random effect across the data subset and the map outputs were the focuses of this study. We used five […]

ABSTRACT Vegetation cover and soil management influence the magnitude of soil losses. In the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), cover and management are represented by the C factor, as it is the easiest factor to manage to reduce loss of soil and water in agricultural areas. This study aimed to determine the C factor of a succession of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) followed by soybean (Glycine max) under conventional tillage, reduced tillage, and no-tillage. For this, data of soil losses […]

ABSTRACT One of the challenges in rice areas is the sustainable post-harvest system, which involves using rice straw management and cover crop species. In this context, this study aimed to evaluate the emission of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) with the use of different post-harvest management of rice straw as well as with the combined use of ryegrass. A field experiment was conducted during the 2016 off-season and 2016/17 rice crop season with different post-harvest rice straw management: maintaining […]

ABSTRACT Establishing sufficiency ranges and critical levels of nutrients are important for a correct evaluation of plant nutrition through leaf diagnosis. This study aimed to propose critical levels and sufficiency ranges of macro and micronutrients based on leaf diagnosis of soybean plants. The database used was generated from 86 samples of the third trifoliate leaf without petiole, collected during the flowering stage from soybean plants of the main cultivars used in the states of Piauí and Maranhão, Northeast region of […]

ABSTRACT Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global climate change. The N2O soil emissions have a large uncertainty because of its low atmospheric concentration levels and enormous spatial and temporal variability, which hinders its correct field measurement. For this reason, there are many papers focused on improving the N2O measurements in the field, which focus on different parts of the measurement process. However, no studies have focused on determining the appropriate method, in terms of […]