Corn grain yield is very responsive do Zn in Brazilian soils. A greenhouse experiment was conducted in the Crop Science Department of the Botucatu College of Agricultural Sciences to compare sources of Zn and their application to corn. Three plants were grown up to 45 days in 10 L pots filled with a Dark Red Latosol (Acrortox, 22% clay). The soil was limed to 70% of base saturation. Zinc was applied to corn seeds (90 g ha-1), in the seed […]

The packing condition of the soil is important for providing direction for land management. In soils developed from recent sediments, the tendency to packing may be related to inherited characteristcs from sedimentation conditions. In a soil toposequence from sandy sediments of Barreiras geological group, in Caravelas city – Bahia, eight soil profiles were selected, five of them from a eucalypt plantation. The soils were allocated in five great groups: Fluvaquent (P1),Duraquod (P2, P8), Haplorthod (P3), Hapludult (P4, P5, P7) and […]

Soybean response to potassium fertilization was evaluated over a twelve-year period in a field experiment on a Haplohumox soil, in Campos Novos, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Treatments consisted of a combination of four levels of K2O applied in the first year (0, 80, 160 and 320 kg ha1), and three levels of K2O (0, 40 and 80 kg ha-1) applied annually from the fifth year. The critical level of K in the soil and in the leaves was determined […]

Supplying capacity, response to fertilization and residual effect of K fertilization were evaluated in a twelve-year soybean field experiment on a Haplohumox soil, in Campos Novos, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Treatments consisted of: four levels of K2O (0, 80, 160 and 320 kg ha-1), applied only in the first cropping, on the whole plots; three levels of K2O (0, 40 and 80 kg ha-1), applied annually in the sub-plots from the fifth year; one treatment with application of 40 […]

Phosphorus is the macronutrient that most often contributes to increasing the productivity of crops in Brazil. It has been shown that certain Rhizobium-plants symbiosis require higher levels of phosphorus, as compared to the nitrogen- fertilized plants. Several different ways of placing soluble phosphate were tested for both common beans and chickpea crops, with the objective of increasing the efficiency of using phosphorus available in the soil without increasing fertilizer amount. The common bean crop set up in Jaguapitã (PR), was […]

In order to evaluate the viability of corn planting in a soil under reduced tillage, a field trial was conducted in Passo Fundo (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), in December, 1988. In the control plots, soil tillage consisted of chisel plowing and disking. In the other five treatments, tillage was done through a conjugated operation (chisel plow with a clod break roller). In the control and in one of the other treatments, the configuration of each line of the planter-fertilizer […]

Gypsum is an amendment used to alleviate subsoil acidity. However, there are doubts about its use for acid soils that previously received applications of lime and fertilizers. There are also doubts on the use of gypsum in the cases of the use of high liming rates or for aluminum tolerant crop varieties. This paper describes a limestone and gypsum experiment conducted from 1987 to 1992 at the Tatui Experimental Station, State of São Paulo, Brazil. The experiment was on a […]

Two methods were evaluated for scaling a set of semivariograms into a unified function for kriging estimation of field-measured properties. Scaling is performed using sample variances and sills of individual semivariograms as scale factors. Theoretical developments show that kriging weights are independent of the scaling factor which appears simply as a constant multiplying both sides of the kriging equations. The scaling techniques were applied to four sets of semivariograms representing spatial scales of 30 x 30 m to 600 x […]

When calculating the mean weight-diameter (MWD) or the geometric mean diameter (GMD) of a soil sample, the arithmetic mean diameter (in the case of MWD) or the logarithmic mean (in the case of GMD) of cach class is weighed by the mass of aggregates retained in that class. The use of the arithmetic mean of each class, multiplied by the aggregate mass retained in that class is correct only if a symmetric distribution of aggregate sizes occurs within each class, […]

The precise sampling of soil, biological or micro climatic attributes in tropical forests, which are characterized by a high diversity of species and complex spatial variability, is a difficult task. We found few basic studies to guide sampling procedures. The objective of this study was to define a sampling strategy and data analysis for some parameters frequently used in nutrient cycling studies, i. e., litter amount, total nutrient amounts in litter and its composition (Ca, Mg, Κ, Ν and P), […]