Fine-texture soils in Brazil are generally deemed to have low agricultural potential. Due to low levels of clay and organic matter, they usually present low nutrient and water retention capacity, and, when poorly managed, may produce negative impacts associated with high risks of groundwater contamination by nutrients and other chemical pollutants, or with potential erosion when directly exposed to rain.

In order to guarantee agricultural sustainability in environments associated with t ...

Status: Completed     Start date: Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2012

From an economic point of view, Brazilian agribusiness has been recognized as modern, prosperous, profitable and competitive activity whose magnitude has established Brazil as a world agricultural power. The activity accounts for 26% of the gross domestic product, 42% of the volume of Brazilian exports, and 37% of the total number of jobs in the country. The finding from this scenario is that development in the country is strongly dependent on an increasing production of agricultural products

Status: Completed     Start date: Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2013

Soil quality may be measured through the use of indicators, which are attributes that measure or reflect the environmental state or condition of sustainability of the referred ecosystem. The knowledge regarding the spatial distribution of soil quality and its levels becomes essential in this case, once it favors the study of their relation with the type of soil management, with the environmental impact and the productive capability of agricultural systems. For such, it is important to have a met

Status: Completed     Start date: Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2009

Status: Completed     Start date: Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2014

Spectroscopy, which is always associated with chemometrics, is a versatile technique that is applied in several areas of science. It is fast, non-destructive, low-cost and, in addition, “clean”, requiring few or no reagents. The latter factor aligns the tool with green chemistry.

The current project aims to strengthen a multidisciplinary team that is familiar with spectroscopy, chemometrics, pedology, and soil fertility in order to adapt and incorporate various routine methods used in s ...

Status: Completed     Start date: Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2013

Some results of practical interest to soil management can be extracted from the soil's water retention curve. The recent validation of the Arya and Paris model for Brazilian soils created excellent opportunities to expand the functionality of the soil granulometric analyzer which is used to obtain in detail the entire particle distribution curve. Since the granulometric analysis takes only 20 minutes, at the same time, through the developed computing implementation, the following results can als

Status: Completed     Start date: Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2007

The intense world demand for food together with environmental issues related to the sustainable use of natural resources draw a picture of search for the maximum efficiency in agricultural productivity, which involves greater efficiency in monitoring crop areas. Analytical tools capable of encompassing sample variation and territorial reach demand high costs for their operation and for the replication of results. Remote sensing has proved a very efficient tool for mapping/monitoring agricultu

Status: Completed     Start date: Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2011

This project proposed to develop a field densitometer based on the use of Compton scattering and visualization algorithms as innovative methods to non-invasively and non-destructively measure density and compaction in agricultural soils in the environment under analysis. For the methodological evaluation, the results were compared with classical soil analysis techniques .

Status: Completed     Start date: Tue Jun 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2010

The soil is of vital importance for the planet. The soil is the main support of agriculture; for climate change, it is one of the regulating elements of the water cycle.
It is in this context that FAO and Embrapa signed an agreement, aimed at the operation of a digital soil mapping for Latin America, as part of the “support for the establishment of the second stage of the Latin American soil system” and whose results and products will be: a) Preparation of a package and program for capacity- ...

Status: Completed     Start date: Thu Dec 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2011

One of the challenges smallholders in Northern Ethiopia face is improving food security in periods of low rainfall supply by identifying strategies to restore soil water stocks. In that region, over 50% of the water available for agriculture is lost due to issues like direct evaporation, surface runoff and deep drainage. The hypothesis is that the use of low cost technologies and intelligent solutions to identify strategies for water resupply and/or water storage in low cost containers like c

Status: Completed     Start date: Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2015