Decision Tree to Determine the Aptitude of Soils for Crop Production.

Soils constitute a continuum across the land surface. Each specific combination of landscape, climate, original rock, weathering process, vegetation and management determine different soil units. In agricultural fields, to distinguish among the different soils units is crucial to determine the best management practices. However, distinguishing the different soil units is very complex and requires field expertise. In fact, most people have difficulties at distinguishing the soil properties tSo happens with undergraduate students at agricultural schools, who have difficulties in learning the aptitude of soils for crop production. In order to facilitate the identification of the different soil units we developed adecision tree The work is based on soils from the Pampean Region (Argentina). This Region is the most productive agricultural area in Argentina and many of its soils are among the most fertile of the world. However, these high productive soils are distributed along the landscape in an intricate pattern with less productive soils This tree was organized in two successive paths (“1. Landscape”; and “2. Soil profile”) leading to “3. Aptitude for cropping”, as end result. The landscape analysis includes the occurrence of floods, sandy dunes, and different slop. Soil profile analysis starts with the identification of the main soil limitations like salinity, sodicity, waterlogging, severe soil impedances, top horizon horizon thickness, and clay content in the subsoil in B horizon. This new tool is expected to be friendlier than the traditional tools based on a strong soil expertise.