SOLUBLE Al, EXCHANGEABLE Al, BASE SATURATION AND pH IN RELATION TO BARLEY YIELD ON CANADIAN ACID SOILS

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Abstract
Seven surface and eight subsurface acid soils, sampled from six Canadian provinces, were cropped to barley in a greenhouse experiment. The soils were limed at determined rates to produce the following soil conditions: I, soluble Al to 8 ppm; II, exchangeable Al to 2 meq/100 g soil; III, base saturation to 60%; and IV, full base saturation. The adjustments were not as precise as intended, but they did provide means for finding relations between soil acidity measurements and barley yield response to lime. Both a 5-day equilibration method and a rapid method for soil analysis showed that soluble Al and percent base saturation correlated better with barley yields than did exchangeable Al and pH. The 5-day equilibration method gave the better correlations, with soluble Al, percent base saturation, exchangeable Al and pH accounting for 68, 73, 40 and 39% of the variation in barley yields, respectively. Although this study indicated that soluble Al and percent base saturation gave equally good predictions of Al-sensitive crops to liming, the soluble Al measurement is simpler and, therefore, more suitable for general diagnostic purposes.

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