Optimization of number of sampling points required for studying the vineyard soil

Abstract

High variability of pH on a very small scale has effects on growth of two grapevine varieties on rootstock Kober 5BB: Riesling and Pinot Noir. A number of 104 soil samples were taken from an experimental area from two depths. The aim of this experiment was to find the optimum number of samples for pH studies, and to implement the obtained results in further investigation on experimental fields. Therefore, in this paper, we compared three different deterministic interpolation techniques on the results of soil pH. Root mean square error statistics obtained after cross validation procedure was used for the choice of appropriate exponent value for these three techniques. The obtained interpolation parameters were used for mapping the field. Maps were classified and compared by means of area among classes of pH in respect to classes obtained after maximum sampling.