SOIL CLASSIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF THEIR PRODUCTIVITY POTENTIALS IN IMPORTANT REGIONS OF CEREAL CROPPING

Our paper explains the classification and functional assessment of agricultural sites by using uniform criteria and indicators. This information could be useful for over-regional comparative assessments of overall soil quality and site-specific sustainable agricultural use of soils. We studied some representative soil profiles in globally important regions of cereal cropping. These regions are Europe, Northern China, Prairie regions of North America, and steppes of Western Siberia and Kazakhstan. Soils were classified acc. to the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB 2006) [1], and their quality was assessed by the method of the Muencheberg Soil Quality Rating (M-SQR) [2]. The majority of sites under study were agricultural research sites. Their management system and crop yield data were well documented. In case of experimental sites on farmers' fields, these data were estimated by the farm manager. The taxonomic soil classification acc. to the WRB 2006 and national soil classification keys allocate names to soils. These names are associated with typical processes and properties but do not provide much information about soil quality and crop yield potentials. The indicator-based M-SQR was practicable and yielded in plausible soil quality scores. Depending on land use intensity and data availability, M-SQR scores can explain about 50-80 % of the crop yield variability. We conclude that this method has potential for the estimation of the overall soil quality and crop yield potentials of small grain cereals, consistently over different scales and regions. The combination of the WRB 2006 with M-SQR scores provides sufficient information about both soil properties/processes and their quality for cereal cropping. This kind of soil characterisation meets the basic conception of V.V. Dokuchaev [3].

soil classification, soil functions, soil quality, crop yield, sustainable agriculture, land rating

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