Sodic soil reclamation using cottage cheese (acid) whey

Abstract Cottage cheese production in the United States yielded approximately 3 × 106 Mg of cottage cheese (acid) whey in 1991. Unmarketable whey is disposed of in sewage treatment facilities or on land. Environmental concerns and new laws make disposal even more costly and difficult. While much whey is applied to land for fertilizer or disposal purposes, acid whey has recently been used as a sodic soil amendment. The objectives of this research were to determine the effects of whey application on chemical properties and infiltration rates of sodic soils. Four treatments of acid whey (0, 25, 50, and 100 mm) were applied to Freedom silt loam (fine‐silty, mixed, mesic, Xerollic Calciorthids) in greenhouse lysimeters and to De‐clo loam (coarse‐loamy, mixed, mesic, Xerollic Calciorthids) in field basins. Accumulative sodium removal at 0.5 pore volumes of leachate was 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.7 mol for the 0‐, 25‐, 50‐, and 100‐mm lysimeter treatments, respectively. Whey applications lowered sodium adsorption rati...