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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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20211
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Subject: Soil Sciences × Author: Kumari, Vandana × End date: 2021 × Thesis Type: Ph.D ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    “MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSMENT OF SOIL QUALITY IN CALCAREOUS SOILS
    (Dr.RPCAU, Pusa, 2021) Kumari, Vandana; Laik, Ranjan
    A study entitled “MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSMENT OF SOIL QUALITY IN CALCAREOUS SOILS” was carried out at Department of Soil Science, Dr, Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa with the objective to evaluate the variability in soil quality parameters, soil quality index and feasibility of mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy for prediction of soil quality indicators under rice-wheat system in 275 soil samples collected from West Champaran, East Champaran, Muzaffarpur and Samastipur districts of Bihar which are calcareous in nature. Soil samples were analyzed in the laboratory for different physical, chemical and biological properties by Cornell Soil Health Laboratory Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health (CASH) standard operating procedures. Soil textural class of the samples varied from clay to sand with most frequent textural class of silt loam. A wide variation was observed for soil quality parameters which included Wet Aggregate Stability (WAS) (0.24-88.93 %) with mean 24.78 %; pH (5.76-9.67) with mean 8.39 (±0.53); electrical conductivity (EC) (0.11-2.77 dSm-1) with mean 0.41 dSm-1 (±0.27); free calcium carbonate (CaCO3) (0.04-54.1%) with mean 18.78 % (±12.64) and soil organic carbon (SOC) (0.14-1.26 %) with mean 0.63 % (±0.20). Among the soil major nutrients, the variation of available N was between 120.35-315.30 kg ha-1 with mean 204.5 kg ha-1 (±34.24); available P2O5 was between 0.90- 422.62 kg ha-1 with mean 103.73 kg ha-1 (±91.77); available K2O was between 31.05-1471.01 kg ha-1 with mean 204.98 kg ha-1 (±146.35) and available S was between 0.37-538.44 ppm with mean 39.3 ppm (±61.41). The variation in available soil micronutrients were as follows: Zn between 0.04-3.30 ppm with mean 0.77 ppm (±0.66); Cu between 0.00-5.18 ppm with mean 1.45 ppm (±0.75); Fe between 2.42-31.65 ppm with mean 10.5 ppm (±5.13); Mn between 0.00-13.82 ppm with mean 4.14 ppm (±2.74); and B between 0.00-7.6 ppm with mean 0.52 ppm (±0.67). Among the soil biological properties, active C, autoclaved citrate extractable protein (ACE), and respiration varied between 6.96-731.38 mg kg-1, 0.32-4.26 g kg-1 and 0.05-4.25 mg CO2 g-1 respectively and their mean values were 256.46 mg kg-1 (±193.4), 1.72 g kg-1 (±0.80) and 0.54 mg CO2 g-1 (±0.34) respectively. The first seven principal components (PCs) factors obtained with principal component analysis (PCA) of twenty soil quality parameters with eigenvalues >1 explained that CaCO3, pH, sand, protein, Fe, S, EC, silt, SOC, N, clay, B and K2O contributed 67.86 % of the soil variability in calcareous soil of Bihar. The soil quality index (SQI) values of all the 275 samples of calcareous soils of Bihar lied between 0.29-0.64 with a mean 0.47, which belongs to a low class of SQ. In the MIR spectroscopy study, principal component regression (PCR) and partial least square regression (PLSR) algorithm in OPUS software were used for understanding the quality of prediction level of the soil studies. Best models for residual prediction deviation (RPD) values with ―MIR-PLSR‖ were obtained for SOC, available N, free CaCO3, sand, silt and clay. Prediction for pH, EC, micronutrients (except B), WAS, active C, protein and respiration were observed as fair models. This indicated that MIR spectroscopy has great potential for simultaneous estimation of a number of soil properties in larger soil sample size and is useful for the prediction of soil quality parameters.