Predicting soil water availability from texture and organic matter content for Nigerian soils

Abstract

Abstract Twenty soil samples were collected from three different locations in Nigeria to study the relationship between available water, organic matter content and particle size class with the objective to develop a prediction equation for available water capacity using these soil properties. A high correlation between available water and the textural separates of the soil was obtained, the highest correlation being with silt (r = 0.96). Organic matter in these soils did not highly correlate with available water (r = 0.22). Silt was found to contribute most to the total variation in available water (95.5%). However, when clay was introduced in the regression equation, 98% of the variation in available water capacity was accounted for with a smaller standard error (1.31) than when using silt content alone (1.97). The equation: Awc = 0.93 + 0.54 silt + 0.13 clay can be used to predict the available water capacity of these soils.