Highly weathered soils are widepsread in the humid tropics. These soils are deep, clayey, and reddish and contain scant amounts of nutrients like Si due to excessive leaching, heavy desilication-aluminization, and erosion owing to their slope gradient and position. However, few investigations have been published in terms of their nature, characteristics, and nutrient status, especially for the geologically young Philippine islands. This study assessed the properties, geochemical composition, and fertility of deep and highly weathered soils developed from various parent materials in Central Philippines (Leyte and Samar). Sampling covered the entire soil profiles, including the lower portions, that are usually neglected in common soil characterization studies. Among the soil profiles, only profiles 3 and 8 have developed from non-uniform or heterogeneous parent materials. Findings likewise revealed heavy losses of K2O, CaO, MgO, and Na2O from the highly soil profiles evaluated. The amount and profile distribution of K2O and CaO is below 0.5% in the entire profile of most soils. On the other hand, there is apparent enrichment of Al2O3, Fe2O3, and to a lesser extent SiO2 in the highly weathered soil profiles, thus supporting the residua hypothesis. In terms of morpho-physical characteristics, the soils have deep solum, reddish color, subangular structure, friable moist consistence, and sticky and plastic wet consistence which are all related to the highly weathered nature of the soils. They also generally have low bulk density and higher porosity due to the iron oxides aggregation effect. The strong acidity (pH <5) and negative delta pH values revealed that the soil colloids possess a negative net charge. Nutrient status also showed low contents of organic matter, total N, available P, and exchangeable bases. Majority of the deep and highly weathered soils evaluated have possibly developed from homogenous parent materials. The soils are classified as Hapludox, Hapludult, and Paleudult.

The world’s current task is to ensure food security for an ever-growing population of 7.674 billion in 2019. Soil degradation threatens sustainable agriculture in arid and semi-arid climates, where evaporation rates outweigh precipitation. Soluble salts concentrated in the subsoil under certain climatic conditions influence soil physicochemical properties, leading to soil fertility and biodiversity losses. Hence, understanding salinity behavior and its spatial variation are crucial for natural resources management to achieve and maintain sustainability. This study aims to model soil salinity spatial distribution using four kriging interpolation methods, i.e., ordinary kriging (OK), empirical Bayesian kriging (EBK), co-kriging (CK), and indicator kriging (IK). Two hundred twenty-two soil samples were collected for this purpose during a field campaign conducted in the Hungarian Soil Monitoring System framework in 2016. The performance of kriging methods was assessed and compared using two cross-validations, i.e., leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) and the holdout method. The Pearson correlation analysis has been used to expose a significant moderate correlation between salt content and cation exchange capacity (CEC) with a correlation coefficient of 0.4 and a p-value of 0.003. Thus, the spatial relationship between soil salinity content (SSC) and CEC was integrated into the model to enhance predictions in areas where no measurements were accessible. The study demonstrated co-kriging efficiency by reducing the mean squared error (MSE) of ordinary kriging (OK) from 0.8 g/kg and 0.85 g/kg for LOOCV and the holdout cross-validation to 0.3 g/kg.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of climatic conditions on phenological observations, yield components and biochemical characteristics of grape varieties grown on sierozem soil of Turkestan region, Southern Kazakhstan. A total of 13 different medium and late grape ripening varieties known, loved and widely used by the local people for many years in cultivation were chosen. The phenological observations (date of budding and removable maturity date of grape) yield components (yield of grape, weight of bunch of grape, number of bunch of grapes, as well as productivity) and the biochemical characteristics (titratable acidity, glucoacidimetric index, glucose content, fructose content) of grape varieties were evaluated in three seasons (2018-2020). During the vegetation period, date of budding and removable maturity date observations were made and recorded as day/month. As a result of the study, differences were found among local genotypes in terms of phenological stages. On the average of years, the earliest date of budding was recorded on 21 March with Children’s early and the latest date of budding was observed on 02 April Moldova and Victory. The highest yield and productivity were obtained from varieties Husayn kelin barmak and Chocolate grape varieties. Titratable acidity range was between 5 g/L – 8g/L, in average of years, the highest titratable acidity in late ripening grape varieties was found in Victory (7.3 g/L) while Moldova (6.0 g/L) had the lowest. Titratable acidity of Husayn kelin barmak (7.3 g/L) was determined also higher than the medium ripening grape varieties while Guzal Kara had the lowest, only 5.3 g/L. Glucose and fructose contents were determined as 8.58% and 11.04 in different grape varieties, respectively.

In Turkestan region of South Kazakhstan has large areas of fertile sierozem soils that are important for crop production and its accompanying economic development. And also, alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is an important forage crop grown for seed production. The soils are fertile loams, but because of the regions dry environment, they need to be irrigated. Field experiments were conducted from 2017 to 2020 on one-year or older alfalfa stands grown for seed production at various plots on sierozem soils in rainfed areas of Turkestan region to determine the influence of agricultural practices such as fertilizer use, pesticide use and conventional tillage on seed yield and dry hay of alfalfa stands. The findings of field research experiments indicated that agricultural practices of fertilizer use, pesticide use and conventional tillage was essential to obtain maximum seed yield and dry hay of alfalfa. But, it was determined that the best outputs tended to be obtained with Fertilizer use + Pesticide use + Conventional tillage.

The paper deals with of the relations between the forest ecosystem, calcareous rocks and content and composition of soil organic matter in the Golo Bardo area in West Bulgaria. In that area Rendzinas are used mainly for forestry, viticulture and pastures. A specific study based on the accumulation of soil organic matter according to the data on the composition of the soil organic acids. The research on the soil organic matter composition provided information on the course of the humification processes in studied soils. Soil organic matter accumulation in Rendzinas depends on different factors, such as land use and climatic conditions. Soil has rapid transformations of organic residues and strongly decomposed plant tissue predominates. There are often signs of active work of the soil mesofauna. Studied soils have good reserves of organic carbon high degree of humification. The organic carbon content varies in a wide range from 0.8 to 7.2 %. The humic acids prevail over fulvic acids, and the degree of humification is higher in deeper horizons. According to the C/N ratio the humus type is Mull in almost all horizons. Studied soils are biologically active that have favorable impact over the soil structure and vegetation. Rendzinas have high potential of organic carbon sequestration.

SOM stabilization rates were estimated in the soils of Antarctic region in case of influence of ornithogenic factor. Soils in large penguin clusters, near nests of Stercorarius sp., as well as soils located in geochemically subordinate positions (also often are visited by birds) were found to be characterized by an increased content of carbon and nitrogen with a rather narrow ratio of C/N. The pH values decreased in ornithogenic soils due to the organic acids that produced plants (mosses, Deschampsia antarctica) inhabit these soils and the decomposition products of the organic matter guano. The amount of CO2, in general, released over the entire experiment period is quite large for both ornithogenic and non-ornithogenic soils. CO2 emission rates were the highest in ornithogenic soils. Ornithogenic soils of the studied area are characterized by the most stabilized organic matter. Thus, the avifauna favors and increases the rate of the mineralization process by several times. An acceleration in the organic matter mineralization rate leads to an increase in nutrients amount available to plants, as in the case of the studied soils. The quality of initial SOM is of a great importance in post-ornithogenic environments. Therefore, further researches of CO2 emissions rates are needed to characterize post-ornithogenic dynamics and develop an approach to model this process.

Assessment of soil organic carbon (SOC) pool is an essential pace for understanding the carbon sequestration potential (CSP) of the soil system as a mitigation strategy and also investigate that they act as a source or sink for the atmospheric CO2 subject to the level of saturation. Improved CSP has been recognized as one of the possible solutions for mitigating climate change. The CSP of soil system for the community forests (CFs) in Nepal is not well recognized. Therefore, a study was conducted in two community-managed forests viz Ganesh (degraded) and Ramnagar (non-degraded) CFs situated in the Kanchanpur district of Nepal to quantify the SOC and Bulk density (BD). For determining SOC, systematic sampling with a sampling intensity of 0.5% was used for collecting altogether 189 soil samples from both the CFs. In addition, the soil samples from varying depths (0-10, 10-20, and 20-30 cm) of each soil profile were collected from each sampling plot. The mean SOC observed upto 30 cm soil depth in Ganesh and Ramnagar CF was 42.55 ± 3.10 t ha-1 and 54.21 ± 3.59 t ha-1 respectively. While, maximum SOC was noticed at 0-10 cm whereas minimum at 20-30 cm in both the CFs. Moreover, SOC decreased and bulk density increased with increasing soil depth in both the CFs. SOC and BD was negatively correlated in both CFs. The total SOC pool exhibited a significant (p<0.05) difference between the two CFs. Hence, the outcome of study shows that the both CFs has enormous potential to sequester the atmospheric concentration of Co2 into soil. With this concern, the participation of local people in sustainable management of community forests enhance the soil quality and meets strategy to mitigate the climate change.

Thin layer chromatography (TLC) is considered as an efficient analytical technique used for the monitoring and identification of the adsorption behaviour of different amino acids through soil as a stationary phase amended with polyvinyl acetate at different concentration. The study gives complete idea about the mobility of four different uncharged amino acids namely glycine, alanine, tryptophan and glutamine in terms of retention factor by thin layer chromatography. Among four amino acids, highest mobility was found in case of glycine. The order of mobility was found to be in order of glycine &amp;gt; alanine &amp;gt; tryptophan &amp;gt; glutamine in which distilled water has been used as a mobile phase. It has been observed from the results that pH and electrical conductivity also influence mobility of amino acids. The influence of activation temperature and particle size of soil on the mobility of amino acids was also studied.

In this study, changes in the erodibility (sensitivity to erosion) values of soils under different land and plant managements (sunflower, wheat, vegetables, sugar beets, alfalfa fields as well as orchards, meadows and pastures) were examined in the Turhal district of Tokat province, Turkey. Physical and chemical properties of surface soil samples along with land management practices against erosion were investigated for their impact on sensitivity to erosion. The sensitivity of the soil samples were found to be in the following order: Meadows< orchards<wheat<sunflowers<pastures<sugar beets<alfalfa<vegetables. The findings show that fundamental soil characteristics, and especially clay and organic matter content, were effective in shaping the soil structure and therefore the erodibility, as well as the way the land was used. The most suitable parametric values in soil characteristics were observed in the meadows, and the worst values were observed in the soil where vegetables beets were planted.

Whey is an industrial dairy by-product. Whey proteins present in whey are valuable functional ingredients with a variety of applications. Because of high investment and management costs, many medium and small-scale cheese manufacturing plants choose the way to waste whey by discharging it to land without refining while large companies prefer to evaluate it. In this experiment were investigated the effects of whey application on some growth parameters of test plant and soil biological properties. For this purpose, greenhouse experiment was conducted to determine the effects of different whey powder solution (6% dry matter) such as no demineralized whey powder (NDWP), 50% demineralized whey powder (50% DWP) and whey protein powder (WPP) on maize growth and biological properties of soils using increasing application rates (0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 ml/kg) as three replication. At the end of the study generally, all whey treatments influenced the soil microbiological properties in comparison with the control, indicating activation by microorganisms. The addition of different doses of different whey solutions caused a rapid and significant increase in microbial biomass C, soil respiration, dehydrogenase activity and catalase activity in soil; this increase was especially noticeable in soils treated with NDWP and 50% DWP. Similarly, addition of 50% DWP to the soil increased values of plant height, fresh plant weight and fresh root weight compared to the control and other whey. Whey has a positive effect on soil biological properties. In conclusion, we can say that this waste product, which has high nutrient element content, could be used in fertilization practices especially as a nitrogen source and multi-perspective studies need to be carried out on this topic.