This study was conducted by the principal component analysis and factor analysis, one of multivariate statistical analysis, with the field description of apple orchards and with the data of soil and leaf analysis in order to evaluate through 60 sampled apple orchards in Korea.
As one of the important capability determinants of apple orchards, soil fertility was taken up for the purpose of evaluation. In this study the authors aimed at attaining a quantitative evaluation of soil fertility.
Having been based on the correlation analysis and preliminary study, principal component and factor analysis were applied to eight soil characters: SAND+SILT, CLAY, OM, TN, BRAYP, HCLP, EXCA+EXMG, and TB among the 19 variables related to soil fertility of 60 apple orchards to extract the common factor of soil fertility.
Three mutually independent and clearly definable factors which can be interpreted as inherent potentiality, soil textual status and base status factor were consistently extracted from the above eight variables in the entire set of 60 surface soil samples and different strata of the samples.
Therefore fertility status of each sample soil could be objectively designated by the scores of the three factors.
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