Abstract

Soil samples collected from 8 field experiments in Western Australia to which 5–8 amounts of superphosphate had been applied once only 13–23 years previously were used to measure the phosphorus (P) buffer capacity of soil (PBC) and P sorption by several single-point indices. PBC was estimated from well-defined P sorption curves when several levels of P were added to soil suspensions, and was the amount of P sorbed when the concentration of P in the final solution was raised from 0.25 to 0.35 mg P/L. The single-point P sorption indices were measured by adding one amount of P (10 mg P/L) to soil suspensions (1 : 20, soil : 0.02 M KCl or 0.01 M CaCl₂). Three indices were calculated from the amount of P sorbed by soil (S, mg P/kg soil) and the amount of P in solution (c, mg P/L)—(1) the phosphorus retention index (PRI, S/c [L/kg]), (2) the Freundlich retention index (FRI, S/c^0.35 [dimensionless]), and (3) the phosphorus sorption index (PSI, S/log₁₀ [c × 1000] [dimensionless])—to provide PRI _{K & Ca}, FRI _{K & Ca}, and PSI _{K & Ca} values. P sorption was also measured by the P buffer index (PBI), the new single-point P sorption index recommended for national use, to provide PBI_Ca values. To estimate the previous P sorbed by soil (native soil P is negligible for these soils, so previously sorbed P originates from fertiliser P applied in a previous year), the amount of P extracted by 0.5 M sodium bicarbonate from soil (Colwell soil test P) was added to the amount of P sorbed by soil to calculate PRI*_{K & Ca}, FRI*_{K & Ca}, PSI*_{K & Ca}, and PBI*_Ca values. In addition, previously sorbed P was estimated using the q coefficient of the Freundlich equation; q was added to P sorption to calculate PSI**, FRI**, PSI** and PBI** values to take account of previously sorbed P.

For the 8 experiments, PBC values significantly decreased where more fertiliser P had been applied to the soils 13–23 years previously. This indicated that the capacity of the 8 soils to sorb P decreased as more P was applied in a previous year, and a single-point P sorption index would need to reflect this decrease. As the amount of P applied to soil in the field plots increased, the following trends occurred : (1) Colwell soil test P always increased; (2) PRI_{K & Ca}, FRI_{K & Ca}, PSI_{K & Ca}, and PBI_Ca consistently decreased; (3) PRI*_{K & Ca}, FRI*_{K & Ca}, PSI*_{K & Ca}, and PBI*_Ca mostly increased, but with some values being unaffected or decreasing; (4) PRI**, FRI**, PSI**, and PBI** values were largely unaffected by the amount of P applied in a previous year. Evidently, either adding Colwell soil test P or q to P sorption to calculate the single-point P sorption indices mostly overestimated P sorption by the sandy, low P sorbing soils used, but the overestimate was larger for Colwell soil test P than for q.