Sugar-Beet-Processing Lime as an Amendment for Low pH Soils

Abstract

In the Red River Valley, about 385,000 Mg of lime is used to help refine about 39,000 Mg of sugar beets. In a greenhouse study, sugar-beet-processing lime (spent lime; SL), commercial ag lime (AL), and reagent-grade lime (RL) were added to an acidic soil at rates of 0, 1.96, 3.93, and 7.86 Mg ECC ha⁻¹. Wheat was planted, and aboveground biomass and root masses were determined after 44 d of growth. Soil pH increased the greatest with the highest lime application rates. Incorporation of lime uniformly increased soil pH in the pots, whereas with surface application, soil pH decreased with increasing depth. The SL yielded more aboveground soil biomass and root mass than the AL and RL. Use of SL for increasing soil pH and reducing exchangeable Al in acid soils would be a viable use for this industrial by-product.

Keywords:

• By-products
• lime
• sugar beets

Acknowledgments

We express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Al Cattanach, who is a general agronomist for American Crystal Sugar, Moorhead, Minn.; Ed Murphy, who is the North Dakota state geologist; and Kevin Horsager, who provided excellent technical support for this project.