The study was undertaken to find out how crop farmers in the Techiman municipality of Ghana determine and manage the fertility of their soils. Data were obtained through questionnaire and interview of one hundred and ten randomly selected farmers from the municipality between January and February, 2010. Frequency count, percentage and correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The f...

Soil type and fertility level influence straw carbon dynamics in the agroecosystems. However, there is a limited understanding of the dynamic processes of straw-derived and soil-derived carbon and the influence of the addition of straw carbon on soil-derived organic carbon in different soils associated with different fertility levels. In this study, we applied the in-situ carborundum tube metho...

In permanent agricultural systems, soil fertility is maintained through applications of manure, other organic materials, inorganic fertilizers, lime, the inclusion of legumes in the cropping systems, or a combination of these. In many parts of the world the availability, use, and profitability of inorganic fertilizers have been low whereas there has been an intensification of land-use and an ex...

Soil fertility is important factors for growth and productivity of vegetation. The relationship between vegetation and soil fertility deserves attention due to its scientific importance and practical applications. However, the effects of soil fertility on vegetation development and succession are poorly documented. Here we study soil fertility in Yanhe watershed at northern Shaanxi on five diff...

Fertility is a very old concept and many definitions are available in literature. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française in 1694 defines fertility as: “quality of that which is fertile; good farming is that which contributes most to the fertility of the soil” (the capacity of a soil to produce a large harvest). A more accurate definition appeared in the 18th century in th...

To effectively manage soil fertility, knowledge is needed of how a crop uses nutrients from fertilizer applied to the soil. Soil quality is a combination of biological, chemical and physical properties and is hard to assess directly because of collective and multiple functional effects. In this paper, we focus on the application of these concepts to agriculture. We define the baseline fertility...

The objective of this study was to explore the spatial variation of soil fertility quality and the influence factors of human land use and soil management practices on soil fertility quality in North China cities' urban fringe of Beijing using data for 2007 and grey relational analysis (GRA) and geographic information systems (GIS). Soil total nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium...

The differences in rhizosphere nitrification activities between high- and low- fertility soils appear to be related to differences in dissolved oxygen concentrations in the soil, implying a relationship to differences in the radial oxygen loss (ROL) of rice roots in these soils. A miniaturised Clark-type oxygen microelectrode system was used to determine rice root ROL and the rhizosphere oxygen...

Soil fertility and nutrient-related plant functional traits are in general only moderately related, hindering the progress in trait-based prediction models of vegetation patterns. Although the relationships may have been obscured by suboptimal choices in how soil fertility is expressed, there has never been a systematic investigation into the suitability of fertility measures. This study, there...

Data mining involves the systematic analysis of large data sets , and data mining in agricultural soil datasets is exciting and modern research area. The productive capacity of a soil depends on soil fertility. Achieving and maintaining appropriate levels of soil fertility, is of utmost importance if agricultural land is to remain capable of nourishing crop production. In this research, Steps f...