Evaluating Soil Quality for Some Soils of South East El- Qantara

Abstract

The governmental strategy aims tothe reclamation and cultivation of about 400.000 feddans concentrated mainly in El-Tina Plain (50.000 feddans), South East El-Qantara (75.000 feddans), Rabaa (70.000 feddans), Bir El-Abd (70.000 feddans) and El-Serw and El-Qawarir (135.000 feddans) areas.. The current study revealed the variation in soil fertility status of soils developed on various landforms in the area as the soils were having low to high in organic carbon (1.4 to 21. 5 mg kg-1)and having low available nitrogen (4.32 to 58.30mg kg-1); low to abundant phosphorus (2.06 to 59.23mg kg-1) and deficient to adequate in available K (23.50to 1360mg kg-1) contents. The result showed the value of soil fertility quality index (SFQI) ranging from 0.022381to 0.665533with an average 0.310947. When fertility quality of the studied soils was examined (according to SFQI); only 27.692% of the soils has very low fertility quality, about 40.00% of the soils has Low, about 28.462% of the soils has moderate and 3.846 % has good fertility quality. The soil fertility quality index, easier to compute with fewer parameters, can be used as a quick tool to evaluate soil quality and to measure changes occurring after using different management practices. This study suggests that using soil fertility quality index to evaluate agricultural soil fertility quality can provide similar results even when different indicator methods and models have been used in the study area. In this study, SFQI determined to be the most accurate method for evaluation of soil fertility quality, because it took all soil parameters into consideration and gave the most consistent results. We suggest using the SFQI to evaluate agricultural soil fertility quality for desert soils because of its highest correlation with economic yield of desert soils.