Vertical distribution of chemical qualities of an alfisol under rain fed conservational and conventional agriculture systems

Abstract

Among the soil chemical quality indicators, the values of both soil organic carbon and cation exchange capacity were significantly more in conservational agriculture systems than in conventional agriculture system. However the differences in the remaining chemical quality indicators such as soil reaction, lime potential and buffering capacity between conventional and conservational agricultural systems were non significant as indicated by the statistical tool tukey test. Another statistical tool Pearson correlation indicated that soil reaction and lime potential were strongly correlated with organic matter (-0.764** and -0542**, respectively) while both cation exchange capacity and buffering capacity were strongly correlated with clay (0.791** and 0.743**, respectively). The study indicated that any improvement in chemical quality indicators of conservational agriculture systems was not solely due to management factors but due to the combined effect of both genetic factor clay and management factors such as zero tillage and crop residue retention.