The criteria currently adopted for soybean fertilizer recommendation, based on the established of critical levels, has allowed obtaining productivity average around 3600 kg ha-1. However, in order to obtain greater and more profitable yields without harming the environment, it is necessary to establish new quantitative models to estimate correctly the demand for nutrients, depending on the desired production potential. This kind of models has been established in the Department of Soil Science at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, for the development of recommendation systems of fertilizers generically called FERTCALC® and NUTRICALC®. Mathematical models were established from a database formed by nutritional monitoring of commercial crops in Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil, in order to estimate the nutrient demand. In these mathematical models, the nutrient demand was a function of potential of production and of nutrient accumulation in the third leaflet with petiole or as a function of the coefficient of biological use (CUB). It was found that, given a certain grain yield, the product between the dry matter of the index leaf and the nutrient levels considered as sufficient or great for the soybean crop results in its nutritional status; this last one is related to the nutritional status of stems, petioles, leaflet, pods and grains. The amount of nutrients in soybean plants can also be calculated by the ratio between grain yield and dry matter of shoot and established values of CUB. The proposed methods allow the estimation of values close to the nutritional demand for soybeans.
nutritional demand; index leaf; coefficient of biological use
