New soil study reveals key to efficient irrigation planning and water management.
Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat) is crucial for managing soil and water effectively. Researchers in Anatolian soils have developed methods called pedotransfer functions (PTFs) to estimate Ksat without costly measurements. They found that PTFs using soil texture, density, organic matter, and pH as predictors perform well. The best PTFs were based on Rosetta and multiple linear regression (MLR) methods, with the most accurate results when combining physical and chemical soil properties. More research is needed to create a comprehensive Ksat database, especially considering soil morphology in PTFs.