MINERALOGY OF SOILS FROM DIFFERENT AGROECOLOGICAL REGIONS OF BANGLADESH: REGION 12—LOW GANGES RIVER FLOODPLAIN

摘要

Bangladesh has been divided into 30 Agroecological Regions (AEZs) and the applied agricultural research has currently been conducted on this basis. In context of the lack of enough information on mineralogy on the AEZ basis, an attempt has been taken to study mineralogy of important soils from all AEZs of Bangladesh in order to provide basic information for applied research. As a part of this attempt, the mineralogy of ten soils consisting of nine representative soil series of AEZ 12, Low Ganges River Floodplain, has been reported in this paper. The clay content of the surface soils ranged from 18.6 to 35.7% and the texture was mostly silt loam. The 2-20 μm silt fraction was found to dominate over other fractions in almost all soils. This fraction was composed mainly of quartz, followed by mica, plagioclase and chlorite. Mica and smectite were predominant minerals in the <2 μm clay fraction. The impact of mineralogy on the inherent potentiality of soils regarding crop production has been discussed.