NUTRITIONAL DIAGNOSIS OF GUAVA: Nutritional Balance of Guava Trees from Liming and Fertilization through Compositional Data Analysis.

The response of guava to fertilization and liming can be monitored by soil and plant tissue analysis, a tool used to rebalance the soil and the plant by adding nutrients in adequate concentration. However, the concept of base saturation of the cation exchange capacity (CEC), used for the purposes of soil fertility evaluation, is intrinsically influenced by the tendency and redundancy of the data, possessing scale dependence and non-normal distribution. On the other hand, the nutrient profile, used for the purpose of diagnosing plant nutrition, is defined in relation to patterns of nutrient contents, which are constantly criticized for not considering the interactions that occur between the elements and for generating numerical trends, due to the redundancy of the data, the scale dependence and the non-normal distribution. Compositional data analysis techniques can control these biased data, balancing the groups of nutrients, enabling the management of fertilization and liming in guava orchards, adjusting the current patterns of nutrients to the equilibrium range of the most productive guava trees.