FAQ

Getting to know your soil is the first step towards sustainable agriculture. Soil testing will assist you identifiing crops nutrition disorders. With soil testing practices you will optimize your fertilization expences, applying solely what’s needed.

Soil testing is worth throughout the year. As for the most suitable timeframe, this is after harvest period before fertilization: at autumn and spring.

For tracking soil fertility change soil retesting is recommended every two to four years. Sampling is also reasonable every time when we wish to investigate plants nutritional disbalance, caused by stress factors like draught, lodging, hаil, etc.

Each soil sample must be representative of the designated plot. To this purpose separate subsamples should be taken at target depth at several locations of the plot. Collected soil is then mixed thoroughly to form a single composite sample, 500 grams of that should be delivered to the testing laboratory.

Soil sampling depth depends on the crops’ characteristics. At small grains, technical and vegetable crops recommended sampling is at the top soil layer – 0-30cm, while at tree crops both top and subsoil layer should be collected – 0-30cm and 30-60cm.

The number of the soil samples depends on the plot size, terrain characteristics, irrigation practices, crops features, etc. A separate compound soil sample is collected out of each sampling unit. The team of NIK Agro Service executes soil sampling against ISO accreditation, with guaranteed representativeness for the given land.

Plant tissue test is a valuable tool to inform us about the actual nitrients content in plants. Thanks to this test we may discover plant nutritional disorders and timely to carry out fertilization for correction. To make correct diagnostics plants must have been grown to a definite phonological stage, at which target ‘indicator organs’ are cut and put to lab tests.

‘Indicator plant organs’ are specific plant parts that are declared for a definite growth stage with a definite concentration range for each essential element that results in normal plant growth. That range is popular as “sufficient nutritional concentration”. Indicator plant parts may be a whole aboveground plant or a separate plant organ (whole leaves, petioles, blades, etc.)

Macronutrients are the chemical elements, required in large amounts for plant growth and development: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S).
Micronutrients are also important to plants, however, they are required in trace amounts: iron (Fe), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn), boron (B), molibdenum (Mo).

Send collected soil samples to the address of our testing laboratory, to the following destination: Bulgaria, 1750 Sofia, 6 Alexander Malinov Blvd.

Your soil results from executed lab testing are delivered to your specified e-mail.

Variable rate application is a technology, at which farmers may apply different inputs, with a zone-specific rate, based on the precise field location of the machine. The goal of VRA is to maximize profit, creating efficiencies in input application. Improvement of soil nutrients’ concentration (phosphorus and potassium) would contribute to sustainability or incensement of average yields. Where soil reaction correction is essential, liming with variable rates would be highly beneficial.

Due to the specifics of this technology we, from NIK, recommend VRA-prescriptions to be executed via single nutrient fertilizers. The reason to this advice is that upon variable rate application of compound fertilizers we generate variation not only with the target nutrient, however, with all of the rest components. At such cases it is necessary to proceed a second VR fertilization, aimed at equalization of the undesired nutrients’ variations.