Assessing the influence of soil properties on wheat and sugarcane grown at Aswan, Egypt

Abstract

Soil properties including soil salinity is of importance for determining crop production. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the influence of soil properties (pH, EC, soluble cations and anions, SAR, CaCO3 and OM) on the production of wheat and sugarcane grown at Upper Egypt, Aswan, Egypt. An agronomic classification proposed by Smith and Doran (1996) was used for soil salinity. Forty-eight and twenty-two surface soil samples were collected at depth 0-30 cm for soils cultivated with wheat and sugarcane, respectively. Regarding the area cultivated with wheat plants the soil salinity, according to the measured EC1:1 values can be classified to 29.16% of the collected soil samples were none-saline (less than 1.25 dSm -1 ), and 47.9 % were slightly saline (less than 2.53 dSm -1 ) with a total of 77.12%. Meanwhile, 10.4%, 2.08% and 10.4 % of the soil samples were saline, strong saline and extremely saline, respectively with a total of 22.88 %. Moreover, the samples collected from sugarcane cultivated soils, showed 19.04% as non-saline, and 38.08% as slightly saline, 38.08% as saline, and 4.76% as highly saline. This indicates that 77.06% of the samples of wheat soil and 57.12% of the samples of sugarcane soil have a safe salinity level but 22.88% of wheat soil samples and 42.84% of the sugarcane soil samples show a hazardous salinity level. Based on the correlation study and multivariate statistical analysis, the wheat grain yield was affected negatively by the soil bulk density, EC, soluble cations of Ca, Mg, Na and K, and anions of Cl and SO 4, SAR, and CaCO3 content. However, the sugarcane yield is negatively correlated with the soil bulk density and positively correlated to the porosity. Finally, it could be concluded that regarding the soil management for the growing wheat and sugarcane at Aswan, Egypt, should consider the soil physical characteristic including bulk density and poro sity and chemical characteristics including salinity levels, soil solution composition and CaCO3 content should be taken to consideration.