Soil-plant interactions in agroforestry systems

Too often soils and their constraints are ignored when designing or evaluating agroforestry systems. This paper reviews the nature of soil constraints in the humid and semi-arid tropics and how these limitations affect plant/soil interactions related to nutrient additions, losses, and cycling via littersoil organic matter (SOM) pathways in agroforestry systems. The ability of agroforestry systems to enhance nutrient availability on infertile soils is very limited compared to systems on fertile soils. On both, however, agroforestry systems can play an important role in reducing nutrient losses. Litter production and quantities of nutrients recycled in litter are greater on fertile than on infertile soils, however, management techniques for accelerating nutrient fluxes through pruning appear to hold promise for increasing plant productivity on the latter soils. Much more information is needed on the magnitude of an controls on below-ground litter production and how it can be managed. Litter decomposition and SOM dynamics in agroforestry systems might most easily be manipulated by managing woody vegetation to produce organic residues of a certain quality and to regulate soil temperature and moisture. More attention needs to be paid to specific SOM pools, their importance in nutrient supply and soil structure, how they are affected by soil properties, and how they can be managed.

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-1127(91)90212-E

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