Soil Fertility Decline in the Tropics with Case Studies on Plantations

This book, containing 12 chapters including an introduction which focuses on soil fertility under different land use systems in the tropics. Chapter 2 contains a global literature review on human population growth, soil resources of the tropics, tropical land use and management, soil degradation and sustainable land management. Chapter 3 reviews historical and productivity aspects of agricultural plantations in the tropics. Chapter 4 covers theoretical considerations of soil fertility decline and includes sections on data requirements, spatial and temporal variation, soil tests and interpretation of soil fertility decline studies. Chapter 5 focuses on soil fertility decline of annual cropping systems and brings together a wide range of data and studies. Soil changes under plantation crops are critically examined in Chapters 6 to 10 using published literature on perennial crops, sugarcane plantations and forest plantations. Two detailed case studies are included, based on research conducted at plantations in Tanzania and Papua New Guinea. Chapter 11 synthesizes data from the literature and the case studies. Finally, a summary of the soil changes followed by some of the implications for plantation cropping and a set of conclusions is given in Chapter 12.