Short-term transformation and dynamics of main nutrients in soil

Abstract

It is known that nutrient availability plays a significant role in soil fertility; organic and inorganic sources of essential nutrients are affected by several factors including transformation processes. These processes are controlled by the physical, chemical, and biological soil properties. Therefore, transformation of available forms into unavailable ones is always closely related to the given soil type. For ensuring the balanced nutrient supply in crop production, interrelations in the soil-crop-nutrient system should be taken into consideration, both naturally available sources and the determinant factors affecting specific plant-available forms. This chapter reviews the importance of short-term nutrient transformation processes in soils, providing the basic and essential information on the determinant factors on them, and gives an outlook on the methodologies of experiments in studying.