Soil quality assessment of different land use systems of peri-urban - rural landscape of Deccan plateau, hot semi-arid agro-ecosystem

ABSTRACT

Soil quality assessment is important for arable land, particularly in the vicinity of urban areas. The research was carried out to determine the quality of soil that has been farmed for different land uses. Geo-referenced 200 surface soil samples were collected from agriculture, horticulture, flower and plantation land-uses, and were analyzed for soil texture and nutrients, of which pH, OC, N, P₂O₅, K₂O, Mn, Cu, Ca, and dehydrogenase activity (DHA) were found statistically significant and were chosen for principal component analysis (PCA). Based on the level of significance from PCA only five variables (pH, K₂O, Cu, Ca, and DHA) were retained for minimum data set and linear scoring functions were used to provide unit-less scores for the selected data sets, which were then integrated into a soil quality index (SQI). Plantation land use had the lowest (SQI) of 0.51, whereas agriculture land use had the highest SQI (0.55) and was comparable to flower and horticultural land uses (0.53). The SQI of agriculture land was found better than the plantation land use in nearly all of the quality indicators evaluated. As a result, implementing management measures that improve soil quality, such as OC, is critical for sustainable agricultural production.

KEYWORDS:

• SQI
• PCA
• Land-use systems
• Plantation
• Dehydrogenase activity

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the University of Agricultural Sciences for providing necessary facilities during the course of the experiment. We were also grateful to the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, for financial assistance throughout the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.