Modeling the Recommendation of Nutrients for Cabbage (Brassica oleracea) Crop

Abstract

Cabbage presents high nutrients demand, which requires proposal of recommendation models that are compatible with current productive potential. The objective of this study was to propose a nutritional balance model to recommend nutrients for cabbage. In order to estimate fertilizer recommendation, the system considered the requirement subsystem (REQ), which includes the crop demand and recovery efficiency (RE) of the applied nutrient, and supply subsystem (SUP), which corresponds to the nutrient supply by soil and crop residues. To determine the attributes needed to estimate nutritional demand, values were obtained from literature and from two experiments, one with nitrogen (N) and one with potassium (K). The fertilizer recommendation for N, P and K consisted in the difference between REQ and SUP. For the other nutrients, the system presented only crop export and extraction and not the REQ due to scarcity of data regarding RE. The modeling is a useful tool for recommending fertilization for cabbage and is subject to constant improvements.