Bonitation - deşi e un termen definit de FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) şi apare în documente Unesco sau UE - pare totuşi să fie folosit mai mult în Europa de est (dar şi în Rusia, Italia sau Germania).


As defined by FAO (2003), page 9, ''soil bonitation is the comparative assessment of the land quality and productivity with a representative level of of agricultural activity.


Land quality

The main factor in the qualitative assessment of land is its fertility and this is determined by 'bonitation'. The 'bonitation' of land is the comparative assessment of the land quality, and productivity with a representative level of agricultural activity. Bonitation involves an analysis of the soil properties, both natural and human-induced, that determine its crop carrying capacity, both its natural productive capacity and that obtained through agricultural activities.


Land (soil and terrain, "land-site") evaluation
In Figure 2 a map is presented for Pest county (one of the nineteen
administrative regions of Hungary) indicating the "soil bonitation value" (potential productivity level) categories for the distinguished HunSOTER
units according to the Hungarian land evaluation system (Stefanovits, Máté and Fórizs in Várallyay, 1988). In this system the soil bonitation value (land productivity) 0 expresses the lowest and 100 the highest soil
fertility in the country.

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Note added at 6 hrs (2011-04-23 14:04:25 GMT)
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The new system is based on the D-e-Meter soil quality index (or bonitation number) which is calculated on-line with the help of a complex ...

Quality (bonitation) of the Republic of Moldova soil layers

Soils with a good and very good quality, with a weighted average of the bonitation grade higher than 70 points occupy 48% of the agricultural lands surface. These soils are either not affected by the degradation processes yet or are partially, slightly or very little affected.
Soils with a satisfactory and average quality (50-70 bonitation points) occupy 30% of the agricultural lands. They are little and moderately affected by degradation processes.

http://ncsa.undp.org/docs/293.pdf