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Assessment of Soil Limiting Factors Effect on Land Productivity at Wadi El-Faregh Area, West of Delta, Egypt

Article

Last updated: 01 Jan 2025

Subjects

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Tags

Water Harvesting and Crop Water Management

Abstract

Agricultural expansion in Egypt is the central tool to maximize agrarian production. Generally, agricultural development has multiple mechanisms and sequent procedures in which land evaluation has the superiority. The major concept of land evaluation is to assess limiting qualities of land capability for maximum land utilization through land use planning. This study aimed at evaluating the influence of soil limiting characteristics on its productivity in a newly reclaimed area at Wadi El-Faregh area. Studied area which extends over 3000 feddans was surveyed by digging forty five soil profiles representing current farms and dominant problems. The soil could be classified as Typic Torripsamments, Lithic Torripsamments and Typic Quartzipsamment with differentiating seven soil mapping units differ in profile depth, soil salinity, lime content and soil texture. Field investigations showed that 66.3% of the studied area has deep profile, while shallow depth covers only 5.7% of the area. Sandy loam soil texture is dominant over 61.1% of the area, and the rest of area has either sand or sandy clay loam texture. Most of the area considered non to moderately saline, while only 10.7% is salt affected. The studied area is non calcareous to moderately calcareous over 83.6%, while 16.4% of the area has high lime content. Gravel content is negligible except for some limited sites over 3.5% of the area having moderate surfacial gravels. Well water samples have relevant quality for agricultural purposes except for well no. 6 and 7 which were affected slightly with salts.  Limiting properties of land capability may be concluded as dominant sand content, shallow profile depth at some sites, salt and/or lime some affected sites and poor fertility status. The studied area is evaluated as order "Suitable" and classified into two capability classes; "Fair" representing 83.6% as productivity index ranged between 41.0 – 57.3%, and "Poor" extending over 16.4% of the area with productivity index varied from 29.5 – 35.9%. Best recommended winter crops are wheat, barely, alfalfa and faba bean, while in summer they are sorghum, sunflower and peanut. Seven different fruit trees are suitable in the studied area with the following sequence: date palm, olive, grape, apple, citrus, pummel and guava.        

DOI

10.21608/asejaiqjsae.2009.3242

Keywords

Land evaluation, Land productivity, Limiting factor, Wadi El-Faregh

Authors

First Name

Mohamed

Last Name

E. A. Khalifa

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Pedology Dept., Water resources and desert land division, Desert Research Center, Egypt. Received June18, 2009, Accepted June30, 2009

Email

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City

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Orcid

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Volume

30

Article Issue

APRIL- JUNE

Related Issue

466

Issue Date

2009-06-01

Receive Date

2009-06-18

Publish Date

2009-06-01

Page Start

299

Page End

308

Print ISSN

1110-0176

Online ISSN

2536-9784

Link

https://asejaiqjsae.journals.ekb.eg/article_3242.html

Detail API

https://asejaiqjsae.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=3242

Order

15

Type

Original Article

Type Code

53

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Alexandria Science Exchange Journal

Publication Link

https://asejaiqjsae.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Assessment of Soil Limiting Factors Effect on Land Productivity at Wadi El-Faregh Area, West of Delta, Egypt

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023