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Using trees to fertilize soil

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Title Using trees to fertilize soil
 
Creator Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
 
Description Trees can also be an important source of fertilizer that does not require spending hard-earned cash once they are planted. Furthermore, they have many other positive effects on the farm environment, including reducing soil erosion, acting as windbreaks and shading crops as well as providing sources of forage, food and pharmaceutical products. Above all, trees are also relied on for producing valuable sources of fuelwood, mainly in the form of twigs and branches, and even lumber when they mature and can be replaced by other trees.



It is the nitrogen fixing ability of leguminous trees that makes them of special value for improving soil fertility. This is especially the case for trees such as Acacia, Albizia and Prosopis which were the subject of two seminars discussed in Spore No. 7 ('Nitrogen-fixing trees and soil biology') and Leucaena leucocephala which was featured in Spore No. 8 ('Leucaena's promising future'). Several genera of Papilioncae have also been found to be capable of forming rhizobia nodules, including Dalbergia, Erythrina and Sesbania, which is discussed in the accompanying article in this issue.



Litter falling from such trees enriches the soil with large quantities of nitrogen and minerals absorbed by the trees, often from considerable depths. Studies carried out in Hawaii showed that leucaena leaves collected from one hectare contained 44 kg of phosphorus and 187 kg of potassium, as well as calcium and numerous trace elements. An added bonus is the increased organic matter content of the soil that, unlike chemical fertilizers, represents a much more lasting contribution to future crop production.



For further details, see 'Potentials of forage legumes in farming systems of sub-Saharan Africa', reviewed in Spore No. 11 (page 15) and available from:



ILCA

P.O. Box 5689

Addis Ababa

Ethiopia
Trees can also be an important source of fertilizer that does not require spending hard-earned cash once they are planted. Furthermore, they have many other positive effects on the farm environment, including reducing soil erosion, acting as...
 
Date 2014-10-02T13:13:29Z
2014-10-02T13:13:29Z
1987
 
Type News Item
 
Identifier CTA. 1987. Using trees to fertilize soil. Spore 12. CTA, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
1011-0054
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/44739
 
Language en
 
Relation Spore, Spore 12
 
Publisher CTA
 
Source Spore