Fertility of privately owned plowland used for field crop production in Vojvodina, Serbia

• Published in: Ratarstvo i povrtarstvo Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 359 - 368
• Main Authors: Milić, S., Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (Serbia), Vasin, J., Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (Serbia), Ninkov, J., Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (Serbia), Zeremski, T., Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (Serbia), Brunet, B., Provincial Secretariat for Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry, Novi Sad (Serbia), Sekulić, P., Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (Serbia)
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of field and vegetable crops, Novi Sad 2011
• Subjects: basic chemical properties; crop growing areas; FERTILIDAD DEL SUELO; FERTILITA DU SOL; FIELD CROPS; http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc#c_10836; http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc#c_49909; http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc#c_6192; http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc#c_7170; PRIVATE OWNERSHIP; PROPIEDAD PRIVADA; PROPRIATA PRIVAE; SERBIA; SERBIE; soil; SOIL FERTILITY; soil fertility control
• ISSN: 1821-3944; 2217-8392
• DOI: 10.5937/ratpov1102359M

The paper presents the results of soil fertility analysis for different crop growing areas of Vojvodina, Serbia. The analysis was conducted on a total of 76,868 plowland samples, accounting for 87% of the total number of samples tested in a larger project. On average, the neutral soil reaction, which is the most favorable type of reaction for crop production, was found in one quarter of all samples in our study. The percentage of samples with such reaction ranged from 12.6% (northern Bačka) to 46.5% (northern Srem). Looking at the free CaCO3 content by area, the highest mean value (10.54%) and proportions of calcareous (30.6%) and highly calcareous (53.1%) samples were found in northern Bačka, while the lowest values of these parameters were recorded in northern Srem. When it comes to the soil humus content, all three areas of Srem were found to be mostly slightly humic, as according to our analysis they had between 72.1 and 83.3% of samples that were slightly humic and only a small proportion (16.2-27.3%) of samples that are characterized as humic. Considering the readily available phosphorus content in Vojvodina as a whole, our analysis has shown that only one third of the soils in the province have an optimum supply of this element. What is of concern is that a considerable proportion of our samples were determined to be either very poor (6.9%) or poor (15.5%) in phosphorus, while about 7% had harmful or toxic levels of this macronutrient. In the case of the levels of readily available potassium, the largest number of the samples had either an optimum or high supply of the element. The sum of such samples ranged from 77.4 to 94.1% depending on the area.