Abstract

Vertisols, one of the eleven established soil orders, are clay soils with unusual and interesting properties. They cover more than 350 million hectares of land in the world and in tropical Africa alone there are over 100 million hectares. Because of their very small particle size and high surface area, these soils have higher physical and chemical reactivity than other soils. Their interaction with agrochemicals/industrial wastes, has been, increasingly, the subject of research especially in the last two decades. Vertisols create special problems when used for engineering purposes.

This book is intended to provide comprehensive and state-of-the-art information about Vertisols worldwide. Special attention is given to the use and management of soils such as fertilizer use, crop selection, soil tillage, water restriction on land including irrigation, and soil erosion. A special chapter has been added to deal with geotechnical engineering of Vertisols.

Vertisols have great potential for agricultural production but many, especially in the developing world, are underutilized due to a lack of understanding regarding their behaviour and management.

This book is written by leading scientists worldwide. It is expected that this monograph will be of great use to soil scientists and agronomists, graduate and senior graduate students.

Improvement of their management may solve the current food deficiency in the world.
K. Auerswald
...Although this book was written by 19 authors, its topics and information are well coordinated. The editors, who are authors or co-authors of half of the chapters, have done a very good job. This good coordination between chapters is evidenced, for example, by minimal overlapping of the references although each chapter is supplemented with 50 to 200 references. Thus, in addition to the tremendous amount of information gathered in the book, the reader is also supplied with many references from which he can find even more details.

...In summary, I recommend highly this valuable, extensive, thoroughly written, and carefully edited book to all those who are fascinated by or would like to become fascinated by the often surprising properties of Veritols, which force us to leave behind conventional thoughts developed from experiences with other soils.
Soil Science, Volume 163, Number 6