Determining soil health parameters controlling crop productivity in a Citrus Greening disease affected orange grove.
Soil health is an important aspect for maintaining adequate crop production, but the specifics of what entails a healthy soil can vary from region to region and crop to crop. In highly managed agricultural systems, unhealthy soil can be masked by intensive management practices, yet there must be detrimental cutoff points in various characteristics, such as soil organic matter (SOM) concentrations, where even highly managed systems start to lose productivity. This negative impact was observed in a Florida citrus grove containing Valencia orange trees with observable differences in tree size yet were otherwise managed identically. A soil health index demonstrated that the areas with smaller trees had a significantly lower index score and those soils contained significantly less SOM (average SOM = 0.57%) compared to areas with larger trees (average SOM = 0.94%).
