Land capability and suitability of some soils at North-West of Dashlut, Assiut, Egypt

Twelve soil profiles representing North-West of Dashlut area, Assiut, Egypt were selected and dug, and 43 soil samples were collected from these profiles to evaluate its productive capability and suitability for growing selected crops. The soils of this area had a coarse texture grades (sand, loamy sand, and sandy loam). Most of these soils were highly saline (ECe > 16 dS/m) and showed low values of organic matter and available NPK, some of these soils are considered as calcareous. Tow modern programs including the applied system of land evaluation (ASLE) and the microcomputer land evaluation information system (MicroLEIS) were applied to assess the capability of these soils and their suitability to grow selected crops. The results of land capability showed that the soils of the study area were poor (C4), very poor (C5), and non-agricultural (C6) using the ASLE program, while the MicroLEIS (Cervatana model) program pointed that soils had moderately (S3) and marginally (N1) capable grades. Moreover, using the ASLE program, the soils of the study area were highly suitable, suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and currently not suitable and permanently not suitable for 28 field and vegetable crops and fruits. The land suitability using MicroLEIS (Almagra model) program indicated that the soils of this area were moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and non-suitable for the selected crops due to one or more of the limiting factors. The geostatistics approach performed with ordinary kriging interpolation and semivariogram was applied to create a detailed and spatialized map for each soil parameter. Circular, J-Bessel, J-Bessel, and Stable geostatistical models were used to define the spatial variability of soil parameters based on RMS, MSE, and RMSSE. The main soil limitations of these soils were soil texture, soil salinity, and low soil fertility. However, these soil limitations are none permanent and can be improved through applying suited management practices.