China: Prefecture Tobacco Company Launches New Round of Soil Survey

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online 02/20/2013

Dali Prefecture Tobacco Company in southwest China's tobacco-producing Yunnan Province has recently launched a new round of general survey of soil for tobacco growing in the prefecture, in efforts to deepen its work of soil testing and balanced formulated fertilization.

The technology of balanced fertilization of tobacco crops is the most fundamental and most importance technology for leaf tobacco production while formulation of technological schemes for balanced fertilization must take the soil nutrient status as the basis.

To do a good job of the general survey of soil for tobacco growing, Dali Prefecture Tobacco Company, which doubles as Dali Prefecture Tobacco Monopoly Administration, held on November 20, 2012 a prefecture-wide training session on sample taking of soil for tobacco growing, to make detailed explanation and training about the methodology of sample soil taking, data recording, label filling, etc.

By December 20, 2012, all tobacco subcompanies in all the counties and county-level cities in Dali Prefecture had completed the work of sample soil taking, with the collection of 1,138 samples of soil in the whole of the prefecture, which involve all the units of exclusive high-quality leaf tobacco production and supply bases, tobacco growing townships and villages. So far, the technology center of Dali Prefecture Tobacco Company has completed its pretreatment of the soil samples already taken, and has established a bank of samples of soil for tobacco growing covering the whole of Dali Prefecture.

Presently, in accordance with the content of effective nutrients of soil and the requirement for balanced fertilization in tobacco production, the technology center of Dali Prefecture Tobacco Company is making preparations for testing and determining the a total of 18 indexes of soil including the PH value, organic matter, alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, rapidly available phosphorus, rapidly available potassium, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total potassium, available zinc, available boron and molybdenum, and is conducting research and analysis of the status of sufficiency and insufficiency of soil nutrients in Dali Prefecture, in efforts to ascertain the characteristics and status of sufficiency and insufficiency of soil fertilization in leading tobacco-growing areas in Dali Prefecture, establish accurate fertilization information management systems and appraisal systems, and realize improvement of the quality of leaf tobacco and productivity of tobacco growing in Dali Prefecture. Enditem