Accuracy of DRIS and CND methods and nutrient sufficiency ranges for soybean crops in the Northeast of Brazil

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to evaluate the nutrition of commercial soybean crops in an agricultural frontier region using the diagnosis and recommendation integrated system (DRIS) and compositional nutrient diagnosis (CND) methods, as well as identify sufficiency ranges. The study was performed by collecting leaf samples (third trifoliate leaf without petiole) at flowering from commercial soybean crops in the states of Piauí and Maranhão, Brazil, and evaluating the crop yield by analyzing macro- and micronutrients in the plant tissue of 98 samples. The DRIS and CND methods were applied based on the cataloged data, followed by the generation of norms, analysis of relationships between yield and nutrients (selecting high-yield crops by the cumulative function of the data), generation of sufficiency ranges, and comparison of methods. The relationships obtained by the DRIS and CND indices with the yield and nutrients were significant, indicating that both methods can be employed for the evaluation of leaf nutrients in soybean. The sufficiency ranges from the DRIS and CND methods presented superior nutrient ranges in relation to the values proposed in the literature for macronutrients, except for nitrogen, and greater range amplitudes for micronutrients.