Land Reclamation Using Compost, Agricultural Gypsum and Sugar Beet Mud.

In Egypt, the improvement of degraded soils is considered as an important issue in the agricultural security program. Large amounts of sugar industrial wastes such as sugar lime mud is producing annually causing some issues to the environment if not exploited. So, a pot trial was carried out to evaluate the influence of some soil amendments on enhancing some chemical and physical characteristics of some degraded soils of Egypt. Three soil types (saline, sandy and sodic soils) were used and treated with three soil amendments i.e. compost, agricultural gypsum and sugar beet mud which were applied to the three studied soils (two weeks before sowing) at three rates (0.5, 1 and 1.5%, equivalent to 2.5, 5 and 7.5 g pot-1, respectively) and moisted after addition to the saturation limit. Soils were cultivated with barley. At the end of the trail, undisturbed soil samples were taken from each treatment .The findings show that barley seeds did not succeed in germination under sodic soil conditions, while seeds succeed in germination under saline and sandy soils. Generally, soil addition of all studied amendments at all rates pronouncedly improved all studied chemical and physical characteristics of saline, sandy and sodic soils compared to control treatment (without soil addition), but the improvement  increased with the increase of adding rate of all soil amendments under study, where the best values were recorded due to the soil addition rate of 1.5% followed by 1% and 0.5%, respectively for all soil characteristics. Also, the results confirm that sugar beet mud as a new soil amendment in Egypt is beneficial for improving degraded soils due to its high content from organic matter and calcium.