Role of Clay in Recovery of Organic Matter in Arable Black Soils of India: An Inverse Pyramid Relation

摘要

We studied the logic of blanket recommendation of Walkley Black Recovery Factor (WBRF) with a set of-1000 shrink-swell soil samples with varying clay content, representing two important food growing zones namely the Indo-Gangetic Plains and the Black Soil Region (BSR). Since clay and organic matter form strong clay complexes, we investigated how quantity of clay can influence recovery of organic matter from soils analyzed following standard procedure. Increase in clay content, soil depth and aridity (low rainfall) have similar effect in increasing WBRF due to decreased organic matter recovery. While the relation is a straightforward in low clay soils, the study showed that recovery of organic matter remains unaffected for BSR soil clays > 60% warranting a new initiative for an inter facial research to link pedology and edaphology.