The interpretation of Olsen extractable P values in relation to recommendations for the fertilizer requirements of crops

A greenhouse experiment, with Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) as the test crop, was conducted on twenty-one soils ranging in Olsen's extractable phosphorus from 1.8 to 15.5µg Pg^–1 soil. The experiment was conducted at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India. The soils were nonsaline with pH ranging from 7.7 to 8.6. A critical level of 2.55µg Pg^–1 soil was predicted by Cate and Nelson's (1971) statistical procedure. Because of a wide range in relative yields, this value did not accurately predict response to applied P. An approach to compute minimum response to applied fertilizer, which is likely to be obtained at a particular Olsen P level, has been presented. It involves calculation of lower 60 percent confidence limits for relative yield and fitting log_e-linear regression to the transformed data. The regression was tested on a published data set and was found to hold well.