Status of Available Major and Micronutrients in Arid Soils of Churu District of Western Rajasthan

Abstract

The major and micronutrients are important elements that govern the fertility of the soils and control the yields of the crops. Soil fertility evaluation of an area or region is an important aspect in context of sustainable agricultural production, particularly for arid region where, sparse and highly variable precipitation, extreme variation in diurnal temperature, high evaporation and low humidity, the alluvial and aeolian landforms have given rise the variability in soils. Besides, acute moisture deficit, wind erosion is most serious limiting factor limiting biological productivity of the district. The region had extreme fallowing in past even during the good rainfall years. But because of increase in population and its activities lot of area are being brought under cultivation, even dunes of several meters heights are also cultivated. In present era of technological advancement in agriculture it is of immense interest to study the fertility status of soils. Although the widespread deficiencies of major and micronutrients in arid Rajasthan has been reported by Joshi et al. 1989; Gupta et al. 2000. The information on availability of major and micronutrients of the study area is meager and mainly based on the widely scattered sampling that is hardly sufficient to bring the variability inherent in the soils of the area. Therefore a comprehensive study was undertaken to know the fertility status of soils occurring in the district and an attempt was also made to correlate micronutrient content of the soils with other soil properties.