Executive Summary : | Soil is essentially a non-renewable resource with possible high rate of degradation and extremely slow rate of regeneration processes. Soil health is not measured directly, it is inferred from a large number of physical, chemical and biological indicators of soil which is time, labour and cost intensive. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the key or the most important indicator in maintaining soil quality/health. But there is lack of information about which quality or stability parameter is the most important for maintaining soil health. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop time, labour and cost saving new SOC based soil health assessment protocol and identify SOC based indicators with their upper and lower threshold limits. The proposed study areas are Nagpur (Maharashtra), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Pantnagar (Uttarakhand), and North 24 Parganas (West Bengal), covering four agro-ecological regions (AER 6, 12, 14 and 15) and four major soil orders (Vertisol, Alfisol, Mollisol and Inceptisol) of India. The hypotheses of this proposed project are: (1) quality and stability of SOC varied with management practices and soil mineralogical make up under different agro-ecological regions, (2) soil organic carbon (SOC) is the most important indicator of soil health under different cropping systems and soil orders (3) there is strong relationship between quality and stability parameters of SOC and soil health and (4) there must be some threshold and optimum values of quality and stability parameters of SOC for maintaining soil health and crop productivity. To address these hypotheses, the proposed objectives are: (1) to characterize the quality and stability parameters of SOC under different soil types and cropping systems, (2) to assess soil health by new SOC based method with SOC based indicators and conventional method with physical, chemical and biological indicators, (3) to validate new SOC based method with conventional method of assessing soil health, (4) to establish the critical limits of identified SOC based indicators for maintaining soil health and crop productivity and (5) to develop and validate web/app based decision support system with SOC based indicators for online assessment of soil health . The novelty of this project is that perhaps for the first time in India an attempt will be made to develop labour, cost and time saving new SOC based soil health assessment protocol and development of DSS with SOC based indicators for on-line assessment of soil health. The practical utility of this project is that the most important SOC based indicators could be used for prediction of soil health with their critical limits could be clubbed with routine soil testing laboratory/KVK/SAUs for recommendations of manures and fertilizers to farmers. Under the proposed study a web/app based DSS will be developed for online assessment of soil health act as a ready–reckoner for the farmers to judge soil health. |
Co-PI: | Dr. Prasenjit Ray, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi-110012, Dr. Tapan Jyoti Purakayastha, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi-110012, Dr. Dr.Nayan Ahmed, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi-110012 |