Developing Soil Quality Indices for different crop rotations of Deltaic Inceptisol regions of India

Soil quality index (SQI) is the tool for evaluating the sustainability of soil as affected by different factors such as land-use change and agricultural management practices. For a growing population, decreasing the land, maintaining soil quality is crucial to reach food security. Thus, the study ai...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis 2021-07, Vol.52 (12), p.1363-1376
Main Authors: Gunasekaran, Yazhini, Kaliappan, Sathiya Bama, S, Porpavai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural management
Agricultural practices
Biological properties
Carbon
Cereal crops
Corn
Cowpeas
Crop rotation
crop rotations
Crops
Fodder
Food security
Land use
Legumes
Organic carbon
Organic soils
Potassium
principal component analysis
Principal components analysis
Rice
scoring
Soil
Soil analysis
Soil properties
Soil quality
Soil quality indicators
soil quality indices
Soils
Sustainability
Urease
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Soil quality index (SQI) is the tool for evaluating the sustainability of soil as affected by different factors such as land-use change and agricultural management practices. For a growing population, decreasing the land, maintaining soil quality is crucial to reach food security. Thus, the study aimed to select better crop rotation for the Inceptisol Deltaic region of Tamil Nadu using the SQI. Therefore, to develop SQI, samples were taken from the one-year-old already established field which comprising seven different crop rotations viz., Rice - Black gram, Rice- Sesame, Rice + Daincha - Maize + Green gram, Rice + Daincha - Bhendi, Rice + Daincha - Ragi, Rice + Daincha - Varagu, Rice + Daincha - Fodder Cowpea with first crop of green manure in all rotations. Nineteen physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil was analyzed. Minimum data set (MDS) were created based on principal component analysis (PCA) and Pearson's inter-correlation. The MDS consist of Soil organic carbon (SOC), Labile carbon (LC), Dehydrogenase activity (DHA), Oxidizable carbon fraction 2 (OX2), Oxidizable carbon fraction 3 (OX3), available potassium (K), and urease. Scoring was given to MDS and SQI was calculated. The percent contribution of MDS toward SQI was in the order of SOC = LC = FDA (24%) > Available K (11%) > OX2 (6%) > DHA = urease (4%) >OX3 (3%). The results revealed that crop rotations had a significant impact on soil quality by altering their properties. The maize-based legume intercropped crop rotations recorded a higher SQI value (1.18).
ISSN:0010-3624
1532-2416
1532-4133
DOI:10.1080/00103624.2021.1885683