Soil properties required by some Southern Africa fruit trees as assessed by discriminant analysis

Some indigenous fruit trees, in the drylands of southern Africa are worthy of interest because of their adaptation to environmental conditions prohibitive for traditional crops. Their fruits or their derivatives are traditionally used as an additional income by rural population, but little information is available about the properties of the soils that support their growth, although this information is necessary if the trees are subjected to sustainable domestication. Several soil properties are, however, to be considered as a whole and discriminant analysis provides a helpful tool to individuate the best conditions for the tree growth. Thirty-five soil samples were taken in areas where the trees naturally grow and produce, and the analytical data of the surface layer were used to relate soil properties to tree species. Four groups of trees were well separated using two discriminant functions that takes into account both the fertility characteristics (pH, organic C, N, texture, and properties of the exchange complex) and the Fe contents and distribution among the oxide forms. The discriminant functions allow a very acceptable reclassification of the data (more than 80% of cases correctly reclassified) and the classification coefficients were used to build an empirical equation that may help to identify the most suitable tree to be introduced at a new site.