Evaluating the Effect of Nutrient Levels of Major Soil Types on the Productivity of Wheatlands in Hungary

Evaluating the Effect of Nutrient Levels of Major Soil Types on the Productivity of Wheatlands in Hungary Tamás Hermann & Gergely Tóth. Evaluating the Effect of Nutrient Levels of Major Soil Types on the Productivity of Wheatlands in Hungary. Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis, Volume 42, Issue 13, 2011 Soil nutrient status is one of the most important constituents of land productivity. The research presented in this paper is aimed at describing the influence of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium availability on crop yield across the major soil types of Hungary, under different climatic conditions. For this purpose, historical times series data from a five year period (1985-1989) regarding soil, land management and crop yield of more than eighty thousand fields, representing approximately four million hectares of arable land, were statistically analyzed. The database was recently recovered from statistical archives stored in the format of digital records of the early 1980s and were used to study the productivity of major soil types for winter wheat cropping under balanced fertilizer input. Calculations were made to quantify the effects of soil nutrient levels. The evaluation was also performed for optimal and suboptimal climate conditions. Results show that the effect of nitrogen availability (as obtained from organic matter content) had the largest influence on winter wheat yields. Up to a 26% difference in yields was observed, both on those soils with balanced material regimes and on those with leaching material regimes, under optimal climatic conditions. Access the paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00103624.2011.581728 Last Update: 05/09/2012