The effect of sodium and potassium on sugar beet on the Lincolnshire limestone soils

Abstract

1. Seventeen experiments in 1957–59 on the Lincolnshire Limestone soils tested the response of sugar beet to 2·5 cwt. potassium chloride per acre (as commercial muriate of potash, 60% K₂O) and its chemical equivalent in sodium chloride: 1·8 cwt. per acre. Average response of sugar yield to sodium was higher than to potassium, especially in the wet summer of 1958. There was a negative interaction between sodium and potassium; in the presence of sodium it was uneconomic to apply potassium.