Saturday, 15 July 2006
166-14

Alternative Anlytical Technique for Determination of Soil Fertility.

Karuppan Perumal V, Shei Amm Murugappa Chettiar Research Center, Tharamani, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, 600 113, India and Jayaraman Arunkumar, Shri Amm Murugappa Chettiar Research Center, Tharamani, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, 600 113, India.

Any system of intensive cropping depletes the soil heavily of its available plant nutrient necessitating addition of them through external sources for proper maintenance of soil fertility for sustained crop production. The regular practice adopted by the farmers is addition of combined NPK fertilizers and micronutrients, most of the time indiscriminately. The soil analysis is rarely out due to the tedious time consuming analytical procedure and cost. In the proposed study a simple analytical method will be carried out to determine the soil profile from alkaline, acidic and neutral soils from 2 different geographic locations, i.e. coastal and interior areas. Different soil samples were collected from the soil before cultivation of crop such as paddy/sugarcane, groundnut during flowering and after harvesting. The same was analyzed for physical, chemical and microbiological values and also through circular paper chromatography. The chromatographic image obtained from different soil samples was evaluated based on the zonation, colour, pattern and the humus substances at the chromatograms. The circular paper chromatographic image was scanned in a computer to get an overall status of the test samples. The image processing with chromatogram was compared the physical, chemical and microbiological values for quick interpretation. A correlation was evolved from physical, chemical, microbiological values with the image of circular paper chromatography. A positive correlation was evolved to assess the status of the soil nutrient with special reference to holistic biological values and to do commercial formulation, which are site specific in nature required by the soil. The new assessment with circular paper chromatography in combination with existing NPK nutrient supplement in the soil will help to check/reduce or maintain the application of NPK fertilizer into the soil. Further the plant growers; gardeners and fertilizer industries will greatly be benefited by the site-specific assessment of the combination of plant nutrients needed for addition as fertilizers to soil. The circular paper chromatographic image processing techniques will be cost effective (around Rs.20 per unit analysis of soil sample).

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