Use efficiency of tropical rainforest soils of southwestern Nigeria as affected by agronomic practices

Abstract

Tropical soils generally have extremely delicate nature and lack resilience to recover once degraded. This is aggravated with increase in demographic pressure on land which has led to continuous and intensive cultivation of the land. With soil quality information, management options can be developed so as to improve the capacity of the soil to function within various ecosystem boundaries. This paper comprises of results of five experiments and it is a review of efforts made by the soil quality team of the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Nigeria, to identify physical, chemical and biological soil attributes that can serve as useful indicators in assessing the effects of management on soil quality. Five experiments were conducted by the team to assess effects of continuous cultivation, tillage practices, cropping systems and land use (tree versus arable crops) on soil quality. Our findings show that soil quality is aggraded, degraded or sustained, depending on the type of use and management options. Conventional management methods degraded soil quality indicators while farmers’ traditional practices minimize soil quality degradation. It is recommended that farmers’ practices that will protect sensitive soil quality indicators are panacea to soil quality management in forest ecology of the tropics.

Keywords: Soil quality, management options, forest ecology, indicators, degradation