“…With respect to K, there is strong evidence of the positive benefits of good K fertility management on disease resistance, including that to AgSS (Williams and Smith, 2001). Evidence has clearly shown the positive residual impact of straw incorporation on the K fertility status of agricultural soils (Cox and Uribe, 1992;Allison et al, 1997;Wihardjaka et al, 1999;Dierolf and Yost, 2000). In particular, straw management plays a critical role in the K fertility status of rice soils since it contains about 80% of the above ground plant K (Dobermann et al, 1996(Dobermann et al, , 1998Dobermann and Fairhurst, 2000) and its removal has been cited as the major culprit of K deficiencies in irrigated rice fields throughout Asia (De Datta, 1981;Gill and Kamprath, 1990;Dobermann et al, 1998).…”