Plant Soil Environ., 2018, 64(6):255-259 | DOI: 10.17221/142/2018-PSE

Sulphur status in agricultural soils determined using the Mehlich 3 methodOriginal Paper

Jiří ZBÍRAL*, Michaela SMATANOVÁ, Pavel NĚMEC
Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture, Brno, Czech Republic

Several sets of soil samples were chosen to demonstrate the applicability of the Mehlich 3 extractant for the determination of sulphur (S) in soils. Archived samples from 139 basal soil monitoring plots (BSMS) sampled in 1995 and 2013, samples from eleven long-term field trials sampled in 1981 and 2017, 1167 soil samples from the areas vulnerable to S losses and 720 samples from the non-vulnerable areas sampled in 2010 were chosen for the experiments. Mehlich 3 clearly showed a statistically highly significant decrease in the soil S content caused by reduction of SO2 emissions in the long-term field experiments from 33 mg/kg in 1981 to 8 mg/kg in 2017 for the median of the untreated controls. Similar results were obtained for BSMS samples, where an average decrease from 26 mg/kg in 1995 to 17 mg/kg in 2013 was found. Mehlich 3 also showed that more than 52% of samples from the areas vulnerable to S losses were in a very low content category in contrast to only 3% of soils from the other areas. Mehlich 3 clearly proved the capacity to distinguish changes in the content of soil S in all studied cases.

Keywords: long-term sulphur changes; criteria for Mehlich 3 extractable sulphur; soil testing; multielement method

Published: June 30, 2018  Show citation

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ZBÍRAL J, SMATANOVÁ M, NĚMEC P. Sulphur status in agricultural soils determined using the Mehlich 3 method. Plant Soil Environ. 2018;64(6):255-259. doi: 10.17221/142/2018-PSE.
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