Nutrient Release Pattern of Different Boron Fractions in Maize Growing Sandy Loam Soils

Abstract

An understanding of soil boron occurring in various forms and their release behaviour in soils needs to be examined extensively in major soil series. A laboratory incubatios study was conducted to study the release pattern of boron fractions under maize growing sandy loam B deficit soils with different levels of B as 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 kg ha−1 were replicated thrice in a completely randomized design. The soils were incubated at field capacity for a month (30 days) period and destructive sampling was done at intervals viz., 0, 7, 15, 21 and 30 days after incubation. B fractions viz., specifically adsorbed, oxide bound, organically bound and residual B in soil were determined. The results revealed that with applied boron, the non-specifically adsorbed B fraction was higher next to residual form when compared to other forms of boron. Applied B converted to soluble form and attained peak values at 21 days after incubation in the treatment with application of 2 kg B ha-1 and thereafter a decrease was noted. Irrespective of location, the plant available form of B includes non- specifically adsorbed B fraction which was considerably higher (1.03 and 1.0 mg kg−1 mg kg−1) on 21st day after incubation (contributed towards 0.02 and 0.01% of total B) which coincides with the high demand for B by maize crop during vegetative phase. The data's also revealed that the contribution of residual boron to total boron was the highest among the B fractions.