You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
Magnesium (Mg) is one of the essential nutrient elements needed for plant growth and maximum yield. The forms and speciation of Mg is important in designing proper magnesium management for crop production and soil health. The study was conducted on twelve (12) soil samples collected from of Alagba soil series in Nigeria Institute for Oil Palm Research. The samples were air dried, sieve and taken to the laboratory for analysis. The physical and chemical properties and forms of Magnesium were determined in the soil science laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, using standard laboratory procedure. The forms and speciation of magnesium was determined by sequential fractionation while the data obtained were analyzed using Genstat statistical tools. Treatment means were separated using Duncan multiple range test at 5% level of probability. The result shows that various form of magnesium exists in the soil and were separated across different soil depth. The water soluble, exchangeable and difficultly exchangeable magnesium have mean value of 0.36, 0.48 and 0.93 in mgkg-1 respectively. The amount of magnesium in the soil increased with increase in the strength of the extractant used, while the total magnesium had mean value of 76.42 mgkg-1 and occur the highest when compared with other forms of magnesium. The HCl-extractable, fixed and structural magnesium significantly correlated with pH with correlation coefficient value (r) of 0.590*, 0.591* and 0.487 respectively while the forms of magnesium correlated significantly among one another.
