Pedo-climatic conditions

Reliability is the ability of a herbicide to maintain its biological action, given the variation of pedo-climatic conditions and growth stage of the weeds. It is a characteristic of enormous agronomic importance. The reliability of a herbicide in different agronomic and environmental conditions makes the compound more easy to use (row (8) of Table 2.5). In general, farmers derive their information on reliability from personal experience. 

The surprising feature of the soil microbial biomass is that its characteristics and general behavior are remarkably similar over widely different pedo-climatic environments. For example, decomposition of 14C-labeled rye grass in soil and the consequent formation of 14C-labeled soil microbial biomass showed no differences between an English soil and a tropical rain forest soil from Nigeria when incubated at optimum moisture and temperature conditions (Jenkinson and Anayaba, 1977). 

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