ABSTRACT The production of inoculum from arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) at a large scale and low cost is essential for establishing methods to assist in producing pineapple plantlets with high nutritional and phytosanitary quality. However, this objective is difficult to accomplish because of the biotrophic nature of these fungi. The on-farm multiplication method for AMF inoculum presents a good alternative to supply the demand for the production of glomerospores. This study aimed to multiply and evaluate AMF inoculum originating from […]

ABSTRACT The success of soil prediction by VIS-NIR-SWIR spectroscopy has led to considerable investment in large soil spectral libraries. The aims of this study were 1) to develop a soil VIS-NIR-SWIR spectroscopy approach using legacy soil samples to improve spectral soil information in a regional scale; (2) to compare six spectral preprocessing techniques; and (3) to compare the performance of linear and non-linear multivariate models for prediction of sand and clay content. A total of 1,534 legacy soil samples, stored […]

ABSTRACT Functionalized charcoal (CHox) incorporated into urea is known for its ability to reduce NH3 volatilization and increase agronomic efficiency. However, it is important to optimize the functionalization process and to elucidate its relationship with the physicochemical properties of CHox for N supply. Thus, charcoal obtained from eucalyptus wood was functionalized with different HNO3 concentrations and reaction times. Ammonia adsorption by CHox was evaluated in chambers with high NH3 concentrations. Dry matter yield, N uptake, and apparent N recovery efficiency […]

ABSTRACT Micronutrient research for sugarcane in northeastern Brazil is scarce and most works on this issue date back to the 70’s and 80’s. The objectives of this study were to assess the available and reserve pools of Fe, Mn, Cu, and Zn in soils cultivated with sugarcane under three geological contexts in northeastern Brazil as well as to diagnose the micronutrient nutritional status of sugarcane grown on these areas in order to identify pedogeological conditions in which micronutrient deficiencies are […]

ABSTRACT Soil reflectance spectroscopy has become an innovative method for soil property quantification supplying data for studies in soil fertility, soil classification, digital soil mapping, while reducing laboratory time and applying a clean technology. This paper describes the implementation of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) using R named AlradSpectra. It contains several tools to process spectroscopic data and generate models to predict soil properties. The GUI was developed to accomplish tasks such as perform a large range of spectral preprocessing […]

ABSTRACT Soil water retention is among the soil hydraulic properties most routinely measured in studies of soil physics and related areas. This property is used in dynamic simulations of vadose zone processes such as soil water availability, surface boundary processes of evaporation and infiltration, and the fate of soil pollutants. The most common measurement technique consists in establishing a hydrostatic equilibrium between an initially saturated soil sample and a porous medium at a certain tension on a tension table or […]

ABSTRACT The soil water retention curve (SWRC) is essential for vadose zone hydrological modeling and related applications. In 2004, Groenevelt and Grant (GRT) presented a mathematical model for describing the SWRC and reported its mathematical versatility and good fit to soils from a Dutch database. In order to evaluate the application of GRT to SWRCs of Brazilian soils, we aimed to analyze the performance of GRT for 72 soils from Brazil. Besides that, the obtained results with GRT for these […]

ABSTRACT Pork is the most consumed animal protein around the world. The production levels are significant, which results in the generation of large amounts of slaughter waste. Such waste is often disposed of improperly in agricultural areas, causing environmental imbalance by the contamination of soil and water sources with metals and pathogenic organisms. This study evaluates the phytotoxic effects of pig slaughterhouse waste in natura and after stabilization processes on lettuce (Lactuca sativa Linnaeus, 1753), radish (Raphanus sativus Linnaeus, 1753), […]

ABSTRACT The liquid limit (LL) is an important parameter for soil classification systems. The use of the cone penetrometer technique for measuring the liquid limit is an attractive alternative method since the percussion method is highly operator dependent. In this article, the importance of specifying the procedure and equipment used to determine the LL of a clay soil is highlighted using LL test results conducted on different clay soils. The results of LL, obtained by the percussion method proposed by […]

ABSTRACT Saprolite plays a central role into hydrologic and nutrient cycles. Despite that, saprolite research is scattered and uses heterogeneous, sometimes conflicting, methods and concepts. During field work, it is difficult to assign the boundary between soil and saprolite. This paper aimed to identify the subjacent logic that pedologists use to assign to a regolith volume its soil or saprolite nature. To achieve this goal, a tree algorithm was used to build a hierarchy of physical and chemical properties of […]