Fundamentals and Management of Soil Quality
Contents: Foreword. Preface. Contributors. 1. Soil quality: a general review/S.K. Singh and A.K. Ghosh. 2. Soil quality in relation to human and animal health/Ramesh Chandra, Navneet Pareek and Dharmendra Singh. 3. Soil, water and air quality: impact on crop and human health/H. Pathak, U.K. Singh and S. Mohanty. 4. A paradigm for soil resilience/Anand Prakash Singh, Amitava Rakshit, Priyankar Raha and Mohammad Shahid. 5. Soil quality assessment/Biswapati Mandal and S.K. Ghoshal. 6. Indicators of soil quality evaluation/R.K. Tomar, D. Chakraborty, V.K. Gupta, R.N. Garg, R.N. Sahoo, N. Kalra, Ramesh Chandra and S.K. Singh. 7. Microbial diversity: an indicator for evaluating soil quality/Sushil K. Sharma, Aketi Ramesh, Mahaveer P. Sharma, Anita Sharma and Om Prakash Joshi. 8. Soil health card: tool for soil quality assessment/Ajaya Srivastava and Sobaran Singh. 9. Monitoring soil quality through remote sensing techniques/Ajeet Singh Nain, V.K. Dadhwal and Ramesh Chandra. 10. Soil quality management in irrigated agro-ecosystems/Bijay Singh and Yadvinder Singh. 11. Soil quality management in arid region of India/Sanjay K. Singh and J.C. Tarafdar. 12. Management of soil biological quality/Ramesh Chandra. 13. Carbon sequestration and soil quality/K.P. Raverkar and Navneet Pareek. 14. Long-term effect of nutrient management on soil quality and crop productivity/Alok Kumar. 15. Impact of agro-chemicals on soil health/Rajib Karmakar, Amitava Rakshit and Kaushik Banerjee. 16. Management of crop residues for improving soil quality and crop production/B.S. Sidhu, N. Rani and V. Beri. 17. Recycling of farm, rural, urban and industrial wastes for sustainability in soil quality and crop production/Mohan Singh. 18. Potential of biofertilizers in soil quality improvement/M. Thangaraju and S. Gunasekaran. 19. Soil quality for engineering use/N.G. Patil and Jagdish Prasad.
"Soil is important gift of nature to humankind. It is important not only for the production of food and fibre, but also for maintenance of health of living beings, environment and ground water quality. For modern society, soil is more important than ever before because soil resources of the world are finite, non renewable over the human time frame and is liable to misuse and mismanagement. Soil resources are shrinking all over the world through several soil degradation process such as loss of organic matter, erosion, desertification, salinization, water logging etc. and competitive use of soil for urbanization and industrialization. Agricultural technologies that led to Green Revolution resulted in the degradation of soil resources owing to over exploitation under intensive cultivation coupled with mismanagement.
This book is an attempt to compile the information on concept, indicators, evaluation, and monitoring of soil quality. It also embodies information on current technology status for management and improving the soil quality under different agro-ecosystems. The chapters of the book have been contributed by eminent scientists engaged in basic and applied research in soil science."
