Untitled

Abstract

The ability of soil aggregates to resist the forces of water and/or wind, the potential to degrade, crust and/or seal is referred to aggregate stability. Little is known about the effect of soil texture and period of soaking on aggregate stability for cultivated soil of four major textural classes in southeast, Nigeria which was the objective of our study. and state of aggregation (SA) at 0 -120 minutes, this result was equally true for DA and SA correlation result at times studied. The correlation matrix of mean weight diameter of dry aggregates (MWDD) with MWDW, DA and SA indicated negative correlation in all the time studied, except at 30 minutes where it showed positive correlation with DA with r value of 0.639 and at 90 minutes were it was not significant with DA and SA. The correlation between aggregate stability indices studied and Na, CEC at various periods of soaking was not significant and OM content was low. Though not statistically significant, hydraulic conductivity (HC) and bulk density (BD) showed positive correlation with MWDW, DA and SA in all the soaking period while field capacity (FC) and total porosity (TP) showed negative correlation but not statistically significant with MWDW, DA and SA, but has positive correlation with MWDD. The findings from this study is of evidence that the period of soaking had some contributions to the stability of soil aggregates and soil properties especially with the trend in the correlation matrix between MWDD and MWDW, DA and SA.