Several studies pointed out the promising use of nutritional diagnosis methods for the determination of optimum nutrient contents and critical levels in plant tissues. Thus, the objective of this study was to compare the optimum nutrient content for soybean, estimated by the Mathematical Chance (ChM), Diagnosis and Recommendation Integrated System (DRIS) and Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (CND) methods. The optimum nutrient contents estimated by DRIS and CND where identical to the mean content in the reference population. Apart from the nutrients Cu, Fe, Mn and Zn, the optimum contents were also equal or in close proximity to the mean nutrient contents of the reference population by the ChM method. The ChM, DRIS and CND methods proved promising for the calibration of optimal nutrient contents for soybean based on data obtained from nutrient monitoring of commercial fields.
foliar diagnosis; nutritional status; Glycine max
