Assessment of soil quality under maize-wheat cropping system of Milak block, district Rampur, Uttar Pradesh

Soil is one of the most important vital natural resource, defends the life supporting system of a country and socio-economic development of its people. More than ever before, a renewed attention is being given to soil due to rapid declining land area for agriculture, declining soil fertility and increasing soil degradation, wrong land policies and imbalance use of inputs (Kanwar, 2004). All the above factors call for a paradigm shift in research away from maximum crop production to the sustainability of crop production system without degradation of soil health and environmental quality. Soils differ greatly in their morphological, physical, chemical and biological characteristics. Since these characteristics affect the response of soil to management practices it is necessary to have information about these characteristics of each category of soil. Soil fertility is one of the important factors controlling yields of the crops. Within a soil, nutrient variability exists depending upon the hydrological properties of the soil and cropping system. In the present study 366 soil samples were collected from 21 gram panchayats and were analyzed. The soil samples were collected from rice-wheat cropping sequence. Analysis of soil samples revealed that 82 per cent samples were medium in organic matter content, 100 per cent soil samples were deficient in available nitrogen, while 92 per cent P and 100 per cent K samples were in medium range respectively. Among the micronutrients tested copper and iron were in sufficient range while manganese and zinc were deficient in soil.