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DIY Agriculture

Sesame — Soil

Metadata research draftEvidence limits

⚠️ Status: metadata draft. Every DOI below is a candidate metadata record from the survey research/sesame-seeds/report.md — title and identifier only, not screened evidence. The survey names soil physical management and organic amendments as weak coverage areas (§7), and the stress-physiology records it does hold are genotype experiments, not soil-preparation guidance. No pH range, texture class, drainage class, or amendment recommendation is asserted; substantive values remain Unknown until S-#### source notes exist (docs/methodology/evidence.md). Not growing advice.

What the survey holds for soil

Section titled “What the survey holds for soil”
  • The report shortlist reaches soil mostly through salinity, waterlogging, an emergence model, and one biochar/soil-properties record; none is accepted practical soil-management guidance. Evidence: Known (coverage statement about the corpus).
  • Preferred pH, texture, drainage requirement, and organic-matter needs — Evidence: Unknown; all soil fields in data/crops/sesame.yaml are null or unknown.

Salinity

Section titled “Salinity”
  • A 2019 candidate covers salt-stress pathways in contrasting genotypes (10.1186/s12870-019-1665-6; survey §3.3). Pathway-level genotype biology — not a salinity tolerance class, not a soil-EC threshold, and not permission to plant saline ground. soil.salinity_tolerant remains null. See climate.md.

Waterlogging and drainage

Section titled “Waterlogging and drainage”
  • A 2016 candidate records waterlogging-response patterns in contrasting genotypes (10.1371/journal.pone.0149912); a 2018 candidate contrasts drought- and waterlogging-driven methylation programs (10.1016/j.plantsci.2018.09.012). These establish that waterlogged-root stress is studied — they do not state that sesame needs free-draining soil, nor any drainage specification. soil.drainage_requirement remains unknown.
  • Practical reading for a plot — whether standing water after rain is a problem — Evidence: Unknown/Needs experiment at the site.

Soil physical condition and emergence

Section titled “Soil physical condition and emergence”
  • A 2019 emergence-model candidate links temperature, soil bulk density, and sowing depth (10.1016/j.indcrop.2019.111770; survey §3.2). The survey lists it as a title only: the modeled soil conditions, depths, and emergence outcomes are unread, so no seedbed-compaction or depth guidance follows. See planting.md.
  • Seedbed preparation (tilth, residue, clod size) at household scale — Evidence: Unknown.

Fertility and organic matter

Section titled “Fertility and organic matter”
  • Nutrient trials and a biochar addition/soil-properties candidate (10.3390/agronomy9020055, 2019) are kept in fertilization.md. That title does not establish household compost practice or an application rate. Compost strategy for a small plot — Evidence: Unknown (open question 7).
  • One tillage-related record (10.3906/tar-1011-1505, 2012; survey §3.10) bundles tillage with seed yield, energy budget, and economic return — a mechanized-field framing whose soil conclusions cannot be transferred to a hand-worked bed. See economics.md.

Soil-borne disease context

Section titled “Soil-borne disease context”
  • Charcoal-rot resistance QTL candidate (10.1038/s41598-017-08858-2, 2017; survey §3.5) hints that soil-associated disease pressure is a studied topic — genetics evidence, not soil management. Disease identification and response — see pests-diseases.md.

Screening priority

Section titled “Screening priority”
  • Of the soil-adjacent candidates, the emergence model (10.1016/j.indcrop.2019.111770) is the most household-relevant on title: it links seedbed compaction and sowing depth to emergence — the exact variables a hand-worked bed controls. Full-text review would decide whether its soil conditions resemble garden soil at all.
  • The waterlogging and salinity records are genotype-physiology first; they would need re-reading for any soil-management implication before use. More than 49% of canonical records lack abstracts, so title-level caution is warranted (survey §7).

Small-scale relevance

Section titled “Small-scale relevance”
  • A household grower can realistically control seedbed fineness, depth placement, and surface drainage long before any input question — yet exactly those topics are where the survey is thinnest. For now the honest soil page is a checklist of unmeasured variables, not advice.
  • Interpreting any local soil: match observations to the same context fields the survey demands (cultivar, environment, season) rather than borrowing numbers from other crops’ guidance — a soil rule from another crop’s page is a different claim under different conditions (docs/methodology/evidence.md “Context”).
  • Observation template for E1: record bed preparation method, observed drainage after rain, surface crusting/compaction, and emergence together — so soil effects become separable from seed and weather effects.

Unknowns and experiments

Section titled “Unknowns and experiments”
  • Preferred pH range, texture, and drainage class — Evidence: Unknown.
  • Salinity tolerance in practical terms — Evidence: Unknown.
  • Seedbed preparation effects on emergence at garden scale — Evidence: Unknown; Evidence: Needs experiment (E1 records emergence under the actual seedbed).
  • Organic amendment/compost response — Evidence: Unknown (survey §7 weak area).
Section titled “Related pages”

Provenance

Section titled “Provenance”