EVALUATION OF SOIL FERTILITY STATUS FOR AGRICULTURAL FARM STATIONS AT SHALAKAN AND EL-BOSTAN

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to assess and map the fertility status in the two farm stations of Faculty of agriculture, Ain Shams University. Shalakan farm station in Qualubia Governorate represents old alluvial soils and El-Bostan farm station in El-Behera Governorate represents sandy soils. Thirty soil samples; 20 surface and 10 subsurface, were collected from each studied farm. The sample points were recorded with the global positioning system GPS and mapped. Both soil physical and chemical properties were determined. The chemically available macro and micronutrients; N, P, K, Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu, were measured in both studied locations. Finally, the GIS used to produce a map for each studied nutrient. Shalakan soils showed deficiency of available nitrogen status across the whole farm. However, the P, K, Fe, Zn, Mn, and Cu showed a clear adequacy across the whole farm area. In general, these soils can be classified as moderate to high fertility soil. El-Bostan soils showed that most of the farm area, 94.8%, has less than 7.0 ppm available nitrogen, which could be explained by the low amount of organic matter in those soils. The available phosphorus shows that the total farm has medium amounts, where the values ranged between 6.9 to 8.7 ppm. However, the distribution of available K status shows a clear low values distributed along the whole farm where 93.5 % of the total area has below 170 ppm available K. Furthermore, El-Bostan farm area has high amounts of chemically available iron and manganese; but has low amounts of copper and zinc. Key words: Soil fertility status, available nutrients Shalakan farm, El-Bostan Farm, and critical limits of macro and micro nutrients.