Impact and Refinement of Soil Health Card-based Nutrient Management in Major Cropping Systems in India

摘要

Soil health is important to sustain higher productivity of crops and cropping systems.Considering the importance of soil health for ensuring future food and nutritional security Government of India started a Soil Health Card(SHC)Scheme and has been issuing the SHCs to educate the farmers about the importance of soil and usefulness of balanced nutrient application.Till 2019-20,about 22.91 crore soil health cards(SHC)were generated.On the basis of SHC data,nearly 71 of soil samples are moderately alkaline,64 very low to low in soil organic carbon(SOC),83 low in available nitrogen(N),41 medium in available phosphorus(P)and 47 are medium in available potassium(K).In respect of secondary and micronutrients,deficiencies of sulphur(S),zinc(Zn),iron(Fe),boron(B)have been found to be significant.Saving on fertiliser(especially that of N),increase in the use of organic manures,and in some cases shift towards soil-health improving cropping systems under this scheme have been revealed in the impact assessment studies.Although,more than 250 double cropping systems are adopted in the country,the major contribution to food basket remains with the few cereal-based systems such as rice-wheat,rice-rice,rice-gram,rice-sorghum,maize-wheat,maize-gram,soybean-wheat and sugarcane-wheat rotations due to their extent of cultivation.To achieve the targeted food production of 450 to 500 million tonnes(Mt)in 2050,adopting the recommendations of integrated strategy involving cropping systems and component management practices in soil health card is essential to achieve required food production besides sustaining the soil health.