Soil quality indicators with potential use at plot or experimental unit scale
Fecha de publicación: 12/01/2022

Many soil quality indicators (SQI) are generally used to evaluate the medium- and long-term variation
of soil quality. The possibilities are reduced when this variation is planned to be evaluated through seasonal experiments. The objective of this work was to find the most feasible SQI to be used at the plot scale in seasonal experiments. Five SQI methods were evaluated: soil management assessment framework (SQSMAF), simple additive indicator (SQSA), weighted additive indicator (SQW), an indicator using principal component analysis (SQPCA), and an indicator using partial least squares regression (SQPLSR). Two aggregation techniques were also evaluated: weighted additive (A) and geometric or multiplicative (P). Fifty-two experimental units were used, distributed in three experiments: (1) tomato organic-mineral fertilization (ExTom), (2) potato split fertilization (ExPtSp), and (3) rotation strategies with potato (ExPtRo). Results for the soil quality indicators ranged from 0.33 to 0.99. No SQI was significantly correlated with yield in all experiments. SQW correlated negatively with yield in ExTom and positively in ExPtRo. SQSA, SQW(A), SQW(P), SQPCA(A), and SQPCA(P) indicators efficiently detected quality changes in response to the treatments applied to the soil