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Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya

Inherent low soil fertility remains a hindrance to potato production in Kenya and continues to pose a threat to food security. A study was conducted in Nyandarua and Meru counties to assess the soil fertility status in smallholder potato farms. Soil and plant tissue samples were collected and analys...

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Autores principales: Mugo, James. N., Karanja, Nancy N., Gachene, Charles K., Dittert, Klaus, Nyawade, Shadrack O., Schulte-Geldermann, Elmar
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7210878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32385334
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64036-x
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author Mugo, James. N.
Karanja, Nancy N.
Gachene, Charles K.
Dittert, Klaus
Nyawade, Shadrack O.
Schulte-Geldermann, Elmar
author_facet Mugo, James. N.
Karanja, Nancy N.
Gachene, Charles K.
Dittert, Klaus
Nyawade, Shadrack O.
Schulte-Geldermann, Elmar
author_sort Mugo, James. N.
collection PubMed
description Inherent low soil fertility remains a hindrance to potato production in Kenya and continues to pose a threat to food security. A study was conducted in Nyandarua and Meru counties to assess the soil fertility status in smallholder potato farms. Soil and plant tissue samples were collected and analysed for selected nutrients (pH, OC, N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Zn, B and Cu) from 198 farms. Critical nutrient levels were used to assess the sufficiency levels of nutrients for potato growth. Soils in the sampled farms were weakly to strongly acidic (pH-CaCl(2) 3.9–6.6) and had low to high soil organic matter content (1.5–97.5 g Kg(−1)). The percent of farms in Meru and Nyandarua with nutrient contents below critical levels were 66% and 20% for N, 46% and 85% for P, 67% and 31% for S, 9% and 51% for Cu, and 87% and 80% for B, respectively. Low tissue nutrient concentrations were observed for N, P, K, and S irrespective of the sites. Soil pH correlated strongly with majority of the analyzed soil and tissue nutrients. These results affirm the need to design integrative soil fertility management strategies to correct the impoverished soil fertility status in the study area.
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spelling pubmed-72108782020-05-15 Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya Mugo, James. N. Karanja, Nancy N. Gachene, Charles K. Dittert, Klaus Nyawade, Shadrack O. Schulte-Geldermann, Elmar Sci Rep Article Inherent low soil fertility remains a hindrance to potato production in Kenya and continues to pose a threat to food security. A study was conducted in Nyandarua and Meru counties to assess the soil fertility status in smallholder potato farms. Soil and plant tissue samples were collected and analysed for selected nutrients (pH, OC, N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Zn, B and Cu) from 198 farms. Critical nutrient levels were used to assess the sufficiency levels of nutrients for potato growth. Soils in the sampled farms were weakly to strongly acidic (pH-CaCl(2) 3.9–6.6) and had low to high soil organic matter content (1.5–97.5 g Kg(−1)). The percent of farms in Meru and Nyandarua with nutrient contents below critical levels were 66% and 20% for N, 46% and 85% for P, 67% and 31% for S, 9% and 51% for Cu, and 87% and 80% for B, respectively. Low tissue nutrient concentrations were observed for N, P, K, and S irrespective of the sites. Soil pH correlated strongly with majority of the analyzed soil and tissue nutrients. These results affirm the need to design integrative soil fertility management strategies to correct the impoverished soil fertility status in the study area. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-05-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7210878/ /pubmed/32385334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64036-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Mugo, James. N.
Karanja, Nancy N.
Gachene, Charles K.
Dittert, Klaus
Nyawade, Shadrack O.
Schulte-Geldermann, Elmar
Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title_full Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title_fullStr Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title_full_unstemmed Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title_short Assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of Kenya
title_sort assessment of soil fertility and potato crop nutrient status in central and eastern highlands of kenya
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7210878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32385334
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64036-x
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