Soybean nutritional status evaluation

The objective of of this work was to compare the diagnostics of the nutritional state of a group of 111 commercial soybean plantations, obtained by Diagnosis and Recommendation Integrated System (DRIS) and Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (CND) methods applying the response potential to fertilization concept. It was observed that zinc, phosphorus and iron were the nutrients diagnosed by both methods as the more restrictive for lack, and magnesium and manganese the more restrictive for excess. Agreement between DRIS and CND diagnoses was higher for nutrients considered of greater relative deficiency (90.3%) than for those considered of greater relative excess (81.9%). When the classes of nutritional state were evaluated, the frequency of plantations with concordant diagnosis varied from 85.9% for phosphorus to 98.6% for manganese. DRIS and CND methods tend to be consonants about nutritional status diagnoses; classes grouping of potential response to fertilization may result in grouping in one class of nutritional state nutrients with high and low probability of response.