Soil Testing as a Tool for On-Farm Fertility Management: Experience from the Semi-arid Zone of India

Comparative Evaluation of Inductively Coupled Plasma–Optical Emission Spectroscopy and Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry for Determining DTPA-Extractable Micronutrients in Soils

“…This conclusion is supported by the results of analysis of a large number of soil samples for fertility, and by the results of follow-up on-farm trials on the effect of balanced nutrient management as compared to farmer input treatment on the productivity of a wide range of food and oilseed crops (Sahrawat and Wani 2013).…”

Soil and Plant Testing for Iron: An Appraisal

“…As discussed in the Introduction, soil tests for various nutrient elements are used to assessing their availability in the soil, and to employ the results to optimizing the use of plant nutrients added from external sources for optimum plant growth and production; and as such soil tests play an important role in the judicious use of fertilizers (Black 1993;Sahrawat and Wani 2013).…”

How Fertile are Semi-Arid Tropical Soils?

“…But water shortage in the rainfed SAT is also a major constraint to reckon with, which not only controls productivity but also the maintenance of soil fertility; and Indian SAT is no exception [3][4][5][6][7][8] . It follows from this that for sustainably enhancing the productivity of rainfed areas in the SAT regions, both water shortage and soil infertility problems need to be simultaneously addressed 2,8 . As an example of the fertility of SAT soils in the rainfed areas, we cite the case of Karnataka state, India.…”

“…Moreover, the ICRISAT in partnership with the government of Karnataka, state agricultural universities and non-governmental organizations completed the sampling of soils from the farmers' fields representing all the 30 districts of the state. The soil samples were analysed for various chemical soil fertility parameters including pH, electrical conductivity (EC), a measure of salts in the soil, organic C (an index of N availability) and extractable P, K, S, B and Zn following the standard methods of soil analyses 2 . The results on the analyses of 92,904 soil samples from all the 30 districts of Karnataka for various fertility parameters are summarized in Table 1.…”

“…Soil fertility is critical for enhancing productivity and crop and food quality 2,14 . Moreover, there is a direct connection between soil health and food quality, and in turn between food quality and human health via food chain 15 .…”