Journal of Global Agriculture and Ecology

Drought phenomena have been frequenting in Egyptian history. So, the drought in the agricultural sector is a particularly important area to be examined. Therefore, a field experiment was  carried out to  evaluate three irrigation intervals as main factor [irrigation every 7, 9 and 11 days], soil addition of some conditioners [ control ( without),  compost, zeolite and biochar ] as subplots and foliar application of  magnesium silicate (sprayed or not) as sub-subplots on the performance and productivity of soybean plants as well as soil fertility after harvest. The main results showed that the  soybean plants irrigated every 9 & 11 days had a low values of growth and  production criteria compared to the soybean plants irrigated every 7 days which had the highest values of  both growth criteria (e.g., plant height, fresh and dry weights and chlorophyll content) and yield components ( i.e., pod weight plant^-1, seed weight plant^-1, stover weight plant^-1, 1000 seed weight, seed and stover yield). The  addition of all studied soil amendments improved all studied growth and production criteria compared to the corresponding soybean plants grown on  un amending soil, where the superior amendment was  compost followed by zeolite and lately biochar conditioner. On the other hand, foliar application of magnesium silicate improved all studied growth and production criteria compared to the corresponding soybean plants grown without foliar application. Also, all studied soil amendments differed among them in their positive effect on soil fertility as well as their vital role in saving irrigation water.