• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.209-216
• /
• 1987

The experiments were carried out in lab. as well as in pots, to develop the agricultural usage of water swellable polymer, a kind of polyacrylic acid(K-sorb) synthesized by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) recently. The changes of soil physical properties and the influences to crops were investigated with various levels of K-sorb. When the K-sorb mixed with soils and soaked up distilled water, the volume of soils increased with the increase of soil available water contents and increase of K-sorb application levels. The rate increase of soil available water was higher in the coarse textured soils than in the fine while the swelling rate of soil volume showed adverse tendencies. A positive linear regression was observed between the contents of available soil water and levels of K-sorb. K-sorb application decreased bulk density and hardness due to the increase of porosity after soybean cultivation. The permeability in coarser textured soils such as sandy and coarse loamy families was decreased with the increase of K-sorb but in the medium textured soils it was opposite. At higher levels of K-sorb, about 0.5%, the permeability abruptly decreased due to dispersion and vertical movement in silty soils, while it was not changed in fine clayey soils but has the same trend with silty soils. In the plot of 0.3% of K-sorb application, the growth of soybean such as number of pods and stem length etc. increased and the yield also increased about 1.2-1.8 times of control. The optimum amounts of K-sorb were slightly different according to soil texture but estimated from regression curves were about 0.2% to 0.35% of soils in dry weight bases.