An in-depth resource that explores soil health issues in India

Soil Health and Sustainability in India delivers a comprehensive overview of the problems surrounding soil health in the different regions of India, The book documents both soil degradation and soil health improvements in agricultural systems. It looks at how to mitigate soil health hazards such as waterlogging, acidity, soil salinity, and soil compaction. It also discusses soil health constraints in different ecoregions and suggests potential solutions for enhancing environmental and socio-economic issues regarding soil in the sub-continent.

Past and current soil conservation programs in India are reviewed in detail to better understand how production and policy-related issues affect soil and water conservation. Incentives needed to address the most critical problems are also discussed. Encouraging results associated with watershed-scale soil and water conservation programs together with effective interventions to reduce land degradation and improve productivity are covered. Finally, pervasive physical, chemical, and biological soil health constraints present in different ecoregions are also discussed in detail.

Soil Health and Sustainability in India explores

• Deforestation and removal of natural vegetation through overgrazing and land use change
• Depletion of organic matter in soil, by excessive tillage, heavy machinery used for harvesting, and lack of adequate soil conservation measures
• Salt pollution from the textile, glass, rubber, animal hide processing, metal processing, and pharmaceutical industries
• Soil erosion by water, wind, and cyclonic storms, and different types of soil, including brown and red hill soils, alluvium-derived soils, lateritic soils, and podzolic soils

Soil Health and Sustainability in India is a timely resource on soil health in India. It is aimed at soil scientists, agronomists, industry professionals, and students of soil health, crop science, and agriculture seeking to understand India’s soil conservation problems and find solutions to improve soil health in such a regionally diverse country.

Dr. Ranjan Bhattacharyya, PhD, joined the IARI in 2011. Since then, he has been working on soil carbon stabilization and sequestration, nitrogen dynamics, soil health and crop productivity as affected by various conservation tillage, conservation agriculture, long-term fertilization, and organic farming practices and different land uses under diverse cropping systems and land configurations. Previously, he was a Scientist at the VPKAS, Almora. He earned his PhD from the University of Wolverhampton, UK in 2009.