Determination of sulfate concentration in soil: depth of sampling

REUSSI CALVO N, H E ECHEVERRÍA, H SAINZ ROZAS

COMMUNICATIONS IN SOIL SCIENCE AND PLANT ANALYSIS

Taylor and Francis

Lugar: London; Año: 2008

0010-3624

For sulphur (S) deficiency diagnosis, methodologies based on soil sample analysis and simulation models have been used, all of which require determination of S availability. The objective was to evaluate the possibility of an estimation of sulphate concentration up to 60 cm depth, using 0-20 or 0-40 cm of soil depth as predictive variable. A set of data from twenty-two fertilization experiments on winter and summer crops was used. For wheat, a close association (P<0.0001) was determined between 0-20 and 0-60 cm depth sulphate concentration (r2= 0.88). When 0-40 cm sulphate concentration was used as predictive variable, the model r2 increased to 0.97. Similar results were obtained for summer crops (r2=0.68 and 0.94 for 0-20 and 0-40, respectively). The integration of all twenty-two experiments showed two linear models (P<0.0001) to estimate sulphate concentration up to 60 cm depth (r2= 0.79 and 0.95 for 0-20 and 0-40, respectively). These results help to simplify soil sampling and would enable a larger use of S diagnosis methods by producers.