Virtual soil testing: is it possible?
2002
Karamanos, R.E. | Cannon, K.R.
Currently only ten percent of the total arable land in western Canada at best is soil tested. The percentage of farmers that soil test on a yearly basis is even lower. Providing recommendations to the farming community for the non-tested land presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Virtual soil testing is in essence a modeling technique that reverses the soil testing process, i.e., utilizes crop production characteristics in association with chemical tests that assess long-term agronomic practices. An empirical model that utilizes crop removal characteristics and soil, fertilizer and mineralization use efficiencies and a soil test level as a starting point was developed in an effort to derive virtual soil nitrogen tests. These essentially model-predicted levels were highly correlated (r2 = 0.85 in the first year and r2 = 0.65 in the second year) to actual levels in field experiments established throughout the province of Alberta. A number of field experiments were contacted to assess the ability of VST to predict crop requirements that are within the requirements generated by laboratories operating in western Canada. Thus, samples from each experimental site were split into six sub-samples and submitted to six different laboratories operating in the region. The recommendations from each laboratory and those generated by VST were replicated twelve times. Both yields and economic responses by utilizing VST were within 95% control limits of the population.
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