Effect of amelioration practices on soil productivity of coal mine affected lowland fields

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Date
2020-11
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College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Sciences, CAU-Imphal, Umiam
Abstract
Reckless mining of coal has often impaired the ecosystem of plant and soil resulting in various scarcities of the environmental bio-resources that ultimately will haunt the living population in a long run. Often mining activities in relation to agriculture has been through encroachment activities accompanied with natural drainage that perpetuate into agricultural lands and resulted in damaging the soil functionality to reach to most of it toxic levels that growth establishment becomes a mere illusion and if not improvise it may further pose a serious implication to the agricultural scenario of the region. Additionally, the stoppage of the unscientific activities during these current times provides opportunity to employ the technology for improvisation so as to make the visibility for better environmental sustainability. Under such circumstances, the need to ameliorate these soil and identification of the suitable management practices for such high acidified regions soils become imperative. Keeping this in regard, present investigation was conducted at the most well-known coal mining location of Khliehriat block, East Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya involving the categorization of ten potential adjacent coal mine affected paddy soils on the basis of their acidity indices followed by the pot experimentation using Rice var. CAU-R3 on the type of acidity categories identified, that consist of a completely randomised block design (5 nos. replicates) with ameliorating assessments effect of poultry manure (PM), compost (C), lime (L), paper mill sludge (PMS) and microbial consortium (MC) on soil chemical properties and effects of their combinations on soil productivity and rice yield at College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Science, Umiam, followed by field trials at Khliehriat, Meghalaya. The factors were PM (5 t ha-1) and C (10 t ha-1), L as CaCO3 and PMS (250 and 500 kg ha-1), and MC applied as root dip before transplanting were incorporated at appropriate rates. Results revealed that on categorization, two locations were found to exhibit extremely pH acid soil (pH 4.51 ± 0.51) i.e., Moonlakhep and ultra pH soil (pH 3.14 ± 0.23) i.e., Ladrymbai. Integration of practices showed significant increase in soil acidic indices such as soil pH by 0.7% to 23% at Moonlakhep and 0.3% to 17% at Ladrymbai, slight increase in base saturation and significant decrease in exchangeable acidity by 0.48% to 49% at Moonlakhep and 0% to 28% at Ladrymbai with T4 (PM+L@500 kg/ha+ MC) being superior at both locations. Confined increases of soil organic carbon were noticed by 90% at Moonlakhep and 70% at Ladrymbai with enhanced available soil nutrients by 30- 40% on incorporating T4. Sulphur (16% to 30%), Fe (22% to 27%) and Zn (9-14%) were decreased with the addition of poultry manure+lime@500kg/ha+ MC at both sites. Soil microbial biomass (SMB) carbon was greater enhanced with substantial increase in SMB Nitrogen and SMB Phosphorus. Enzymes activities were also seen to be improved with the application of the amelioration practices at both locations' soils. Yield attributes were significantly influenced by different treatments. Highest plant height (83.58 cm and 81.32 cm), Grain yield (3.61 t ha-1 and 2.88t ha-1) were recorded under the practices of T4. However, stover yield (7.88 t ha-1) was noticed in T8 (PM+PMS @500kg/ha+ MC) at Moonlakhep while in Ladrymbai it was maximum at T4 (7.42 t ha-1). Field trials studies however revealed that the effectiveness of the amelioration practices was less and indicates long term experimentation. The performance these amelioration practices were better in extremely acid soil of Moonlakhep than the ultra-acid soil of Ladrymbai, with slight improvement of both highly acidic soils.
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Keywords
Soil treatment, Acid soils
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