A Comparison of Two Soil Quality Assessment Methods in Relation to Crop Production and Other Ecological Services in Tropical Central India
2023
Rajendiran S.
Soil quality degradation is a major threat to crop production. Therefore, periodic evaluation of soil qualitystatus of a production system is inevitable for adopting sustainable management interventions. The soilquality status of tribal areas of central India is not known and there is no standard soil quality assessmentmethod developed for these areas. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to evaluate soil quality of tropicalcentral India by adopting expert opinion method (EOM) and advanced inclusive method (AIM) and relatingthem with production functions and other ecological services. In total 1860 soil samples were collectedacross Jhabua, Alirajpur, and Dhar districts of Madhya Pradesh and analyzed. Nearly 15 soil physical,chemical and biological parameters were used for soil quality index (SQI) calculation. Weight and scoreswere given to each indicators following EOM. In case of AIM, weight to each indicator assigned based onits correlation with yield, degree of variation and per cent deficiency. The SQI, relative SQI (RSQI) andrelative yield (RY) were calculated. The RSQIs were related with the RYs using linear regression model.Based on RSQI values of AIM and EOM, distribution of poor quality soils were of 66.3 and 77.2% forJhabua, 84.8 and 85.4% for Alirajpur, 69.0 and 67.2% for Dhar, respectively. None of the soils in theregion had very good soil quality status. Between two methods, AIM had advantage over EOM and itfocuses interlinking soil threats, soil function and ecological services. In conclusion, soil quality in thestudy area is highly degraded and adoption of sustainable soil management practices could improve soilquality and crop productivity of the study area.
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