Use of Indigenous Soil‐Rubidium Absorbed by Cotton Plants in Determining Labile Soil‐Potassium Pool Sizes

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Abstract
The rubidium/potassium (Rb/K) ratios of natural soils and of most soil‐grown plants are higher than Rb/K ratios of many available fertilizer‐grade potassium salts as revealed by analyses of 24 samples of commercial K‐fertilizers. Low‐Rb K‐fertilizers of 0.02 mmoles Rb/mole K or lower may offer practicable means for field scale tracing of fertilizer‐K absorbed by crop plants when growing under normal management regimes. Whenever K‐fertilization results in lower Rb/K ratios appearing in fertilized plants, this dilution or “reversed‐tagging” of indigenous soil‐Rb with low Rb‐containing K‐fertilizers permits determinations of pool‐sizes of labile soil‐K. Four different soils were compared for NH4OAc extractable‐K, HNO3 extractable‐K, and the pool‐size of labile‐K as determined from Rb/K ratios of K‐fertilized cotton plants (Gossupium hirsutum L.). A large pool size of labile‐K does not necessarily mean that the K supplying power of a soil is large. The Rb/K ratios can also be used to calculate relative amounts of absorbed plant‐K originating from the indigenous soil‐pool vs. the plant‐K derived from a K‐fertilizer.

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