Brazilian Soil Fertility Survey

Brazil lacks modern data for soil fertility surveys which can help the government, industry and crop consultants in their efforts to ameriolate soil chemical properties for adequate plant nutrition. IPNI Brazil has been involved in guiding the proccess for obtaining such surveys. The project was delineated in three phases. Phase 1 was a simple soil fertility survey from soil test results presently at IPNI Brazil database. Phase 2 is under development and will consist in a survey with laboratories running the ion exchange resin methodology and will concentrate in the State of Sao Paulo. Phase 3 will include the most important laboratories in the country. This project will be reported every 5 years.

IPNI-2010-BRA-61

25 Mar 2015

2014 Annual Interpretive Summary


A soil fertility survey can serve as an excellent tool for many stakeholder groups in discussing and planning strategies for sustainable agriculture. It has a goal of showing the condition of soil nutrient availability for a farm, region, state, or even a country. Brazil has different methodologies across the country for evaluating nutrient status, but existing surveys do not adequately represent the best science in terms of soil fertility. IPNI Brazil is developing efforts to gather the information needed to construct a country-wide soil fertility survey in the near future.

The model project will start for the State of São Paulo and then develop to cover the whole country. A Working Group of interested researchers has been created, which will be coordinated by Dr. Luis Prochnow, IPNI Brazil Program Director. Presently, the Working Group members includes: Dr. Heitor Cantarella from Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC), Dr. Dirceu Fernandes from São Paulo State University (UNESP) Botucatu, and Mr. Francisco Cunha from Tec-fertil. The Working Group plans to have the soil fertility survey for São Paulo finished by the end of 2016.