Interaction of soil health indicators to different regenerative farming practices on mineral soils

Abstract

Regenerative farming is a common practice adopted to enhance soil health. Routinely, cheaply measured soil health indicators can be used to predict unknown soil health indicators, which makes analysis simple and fast. The objective of this study was to determine the interaction and relationship between soil health indicators and the effects of regenerative farming practices on soil health indicators. We conducted a comprehensive on-farm study across Florida, measuring 11 soil health indicators for 592 soil samples that were collected from the surface 15 cm of soil on 13 experimental sites. Sampled fields were conventionally managed or subjected to either cover cropping, organic amendment application, or their combination, and fallow fields as control plots. We tested the Pearson correlation coefficient between 11 soil health indicators and further tested the types of relationships between each indicator using regression analysis. Strong positive correlations (r ≥ +.5 to 1.0) were obtained, especially between organic matter (OM) with maximum water holding capacity (MWHC), cation exchange capacity (CEC), soil protein (SP), and total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN); MWHC with CEC, SP, and TKN; TKN with CEC and SP; total phosphorus (TP) with Mehlich-3 phosphorus (M3P). A strong negative correlation (r ≥ –.5 to –1.0) was observed between bulk density (BD) with OM, MWHC, CEC, and TKN. No significant change in soil health indicators was observed in control plots except for active carbon (AC) and CEC. Organic amendments and a combination of organic amendments with cover crops were effective in improving soil health indicators. However, cover crops alone had no effect on soil health indicators except for CEC and M3K.