Soil Quality Indicators and Indices in Semi Arid Tropics

According to the statistics of Food and Agriculture organization, agriculture is practiced on 12% of the total land area, hosting around 42% of the global population. Out of this area, about 80% is under rainfed agriculture contributing about 60-70 % to global food basket and plays a predominant role in global food production. In India, nearly 59.8% of the net cultivated area is rainfed. These areas are constrained by poverty, malnutrition, water scarcity, severe land degradation, and poor physical and financial infrastructure. Beside climatic aberrations and climate change, the predominant soil related productivity constraints in rainfed regions include land degradation and soil quality deterioration. In this book, we have made sincere efforts to document the long term effects of restorative and conservation soil management practices on soil quality and to identify the key soil quality indicators for rainfed lands. Authors believe that the information and methodology presented in this book would be useful to the researchers, teachers, students, NGO s, Provincial Agricultural Departments and land managers not only in India but also in other identical locations across the world over