Effects of soil redox potential (Eh) and pH on growth of sunflower and wheat

ABSTRACT

Soil redox potential (Eh) and pH are fundamentals parameters for plants growth. Measuring soil Eh is essential but complex due to the lack of measurement reliability resulting from high temporal variability and metrological challenges. This paper proposes practical advancements for measuring Eh in aerobic soils using combined electrodes (improvements in methodology specific to cleaning electrodes, measurement time, cleaning the dataset). The study of soil Eh and pH on sunflower and wheat in pot experiments has highlighted the relationship between Eh_cumul (Eh associated with a dimension of time) and the portion of porosity that is accessible to air. For reduced soil conditions, sunflower positively reacts to better aeration. Strong correlations exist between the duration of each potential range and the growth of sunflower. The study of sunflower growth in soil reveals extremely harmful impact resulting from too high and/or too low Eh values.