Soil Magnetism and Magnetically Treated Water and Possible Role for Sustainable Agriculture: A review

The interest for the application of the magnetic treatment technology in different agronomic aspects is increasing. Most agricultural studies do not take into account an important factor that may have a strong role affects the efficient application of the technology, which is the soil magnetism (SM). Magnetic susceptibility of soil is one of the measurable soil properties and utilized for different applications such as climatic information, pollution, archaeology, agronomy. It refers to the presence of iron oxide and oxy-hydroxide minerals, with different types and concentration. Magnetic field affects the hydrophilic/hydrophobic character of water toward materials, soaking degree, electric conductivity, and many other properties. Many factors can affect the soil magnetism such as climate, soil drainage, and Gleization, temperature, bacterial and microbial action, vegetation, and topography. This review focuses on this promising soil property and the possibility to use it as a prediction tool for sustainable agriculture. It introduces for the subject, highlight the source of this property and measurement parameters, affecting factors, and fields of applications. It also highlights some characteristics of water when it is magnetically treated to give an overview of different topics that can be further studied to correlate the magnetism of water with the magnetism of soil for an optimum application of the magnetic technology.