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

29 Apr 2016

2015 Annual Interpretive Summary


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

For phase 2, under development, IPNI Brazil collected the results from soil testing from six important laboratories (47,053 samples from 528 cities) in the state of Sao Paulo for the year of 2014. This is considered a preliminary test in preparation for the results from 2015, which should include around 100 laboratories. Difficulties in managing the data were discussed in a recent meeting with the laboratories in seeking better data submission. Results showed a median of 17 mg/dm3 and 2 mmolc/dm3, respectively for P and K, which are considered medium levels (91 to 100% of maximum yield). The results also showed 46% and 39% of the results as very low (0 to 70% of maximum yield) or low (71 to 90% of maximum yield) for P and K, respectively.

In summary, the numbers indicate a great likelihood of responses to these two nutrients in this state by different crops. These results are preliminary as the total survey for 2015 will include a much larger number of samples.