Effects of clay mineralogy on soil fertility of the arable Iand in the tropics.

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Soil samples were collected from arable land in Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma and East Malaysia), South America (Parguay, Brazil and Columbia) and Africa (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zaire and Rwanda) and analyzed for mineralogical and physico-chemical characterization.Multivariate statistical analysis (principal component analysis) was applied to the above mentioned soils data and three factors controlling soil fertility, i.e.inherent potentiality, organic matter status and available phosphorus status were extracted, each of these enabling quantitative soil evaluation. The same procedure was applied to those samples and two factors, i.e.Iithology and weathering status, were identified and proved to be useful for characterizing the nature of soil materials. All such factors were closely related to the type of predominating clay minerals of each soil.