Diagnostic Techniques For Soils And Crops

Additional Contributors Include Roger H. Bray, Ivan E. Miles, J. Fielding Reed And Others.

An immensely helpful guide, Diagnostic Techniques for Improving Crop Production presents and discusses diagnostic procedures that growers, production managers, and consultants need to know in order to optimize conditions for growing crops and realizing maximum economic yields. This book gives readers diagnostic techniques that include both field methods and laboratory procedures, while its instructor?s manual helps professors of agriculture prepare growers for implementing techniques that lead to higher crop quality and yield, lower unit costs, and less pollution from agricultural chemicals. Field procedures and sample selection for laboratory procedures are given in detail, while those techniques run in a laboratory are briefly outlined and evaluated in terms of effectiveness and cost. Diagnostic Techniques for Improving Crop Production helps you learn how to provide ideal conditions for growth while eliminating or reducing stresses that can impair crop production. The book?s instructor?s manual helps you manage vast amounts of information and bring to life for your students key diagnostic procedures for evaluating chemical and physical characteristics of soil, seed vigor and purity, plant composition, crop maturity, water quality and timing of water applications, climactic conditions, and pest control. While most of the procedures deal with providing ideal conditions which help avoid problems, the final chapter discusses procedures useful in determining causes of poor crop performance, allowing you to correct problems before serious losses are sustained. By the end of this book, you will be much more skillful at determining the need and timing of fertilizers, water, and pesticides and able to reduce cost, waste, and harmful effects on the environment. Diagnostic Techniques for Improving Crop Production is unique in that it provides not only useful diagnostic techniques but also norms for the various components responsible for optimum crop production. It emphasizes measurement of the components that affect crop yield and quality so the components can be altered when necessary to provide economical, ideal conditions for producing and marketing the crop. The book is a complete reference and guide for growers, farm and production managers, consultants, and extension personnel.

The Handbook of Reference Methods for Plant Analysis is an outstanding resource of plant analysis procedures, outlined in easy-to-follow steps and laboratory-ready for implementation. Plant laboratory preparation methods such as dry ashing and acid and microwave digestion are discussed in detail. Extraction techniques for analysis of readily soluble elements (petiole analysis) and quick test kits for field testing are also presented. This handbook consolidates proven, time tested methods in one convenient source. Plant scientists in production agriculture, forestry, horticulture, environmental sciences, and other related disciplines will find the Handbook a standard laboratory reference. The Handbook was written for the Soil and Plant Analysis Council, Inc., of which the editor is a board member. The council aims to promote uniform soil test and plant analysis methods, use, interpretation, and terminology; and to stimulate research on the calibration and use of soil testing and plant analysis. This reference will help readers reach these important goals in their own research.