Rk Naresh

Improving soil quality for farming involves implementing practices such as adding organic matter through compost, manure, cover crops, and crop residues, reducing tillage, rotating crops, diversifying cropping systems, and managing nutrients to maintain balance and prevent imbalances. These strategies promote soil fertility, structure, and biological activity while minimizing erosion, nutrient depletion, and degradation. Soil organic matter plays a crucial role in maintaining sustainability by enhancing soil fertility, improving structure, supporting microbial activity, increasing water holding capacity, and reducing erosion risk. By prioritizing practices that enhance soil organic matter content and actively managing soil health, farmers can improve agricultural productivity, resilience, and sustainability while mitigating environmental impacts and promoting long-term land stewardship.

Dr Rohit Kumar thank you for your contribution to the discussion

Soil fertility can be further improved by incorporating cover crops that add organic matter to the soil, which leads to improved soil structure and promotes a healthy, fertile soil; by using green manure or growing legumes to fix nitrogen from the air through the process of biological nitrogen fixation. After ploughing and leveling, manure is applied to further stages of farming. Manuring is done to replenish the soil with nutrients and thus helps in the proper growth of the crop. Soil preparation makes an agricultural field fertile and ready for farming.Any addition of organic material helps improve soil quality. Organic material adds carbon to the soil and helps to keep soil aggregates separate and intact. When ploughing-in straw, try to avoid burying it all at plough depth. It plays a crucial role in maintaining sustainability of cropping systems by improving soil physical (texture, structure, bulk density, and water-holding capacity), chemical (nutrient availability, cation exchange capacity, reduced aluminum toxicity, and allelopathy). Soil organic matter significantly improves the soil's capacity to store and supply essential nutrients and to retain toxic elements. It allows the soil to cope with changes in soil acidity, and helps soil minerals to decompose faster. Soil helps produce our food and unearth life-saving medicines and vaccines. Soil also filters and purifies our water, reduces flooding, regulates the atmosphere and plays a crucial role in driving the carbon and nitrogen cycles. It is also key to tackling climate change as it captures and stores vast amounts of carbon. Organic matter includes any plant or animal material that returns to the soil and goes through the decomposition process. In addition to providing nutrients and habitat to organisms living in the soil, organic matter also binds soil particles into aggregates and improves the water holding capacity of soil. SOM affects the amount of water in a soil by influencing 1) water infiltration and percolation, 2) evaporation rates, and 3) increasing the soil water holding capacity. Surface residues also slow the rate of water evaporation from the soil and improve soil structure, which helps prevent soil crusting.

Improving soil quality for farming involves implementing practices that enhance soil health, fertility, and productivity. Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a crucial role in maintaining the sustainability of cropping systems. Here are key strategies and roles of soil organic matter:

Improving Soil Quality for Farming:

Role of Soil Organic Matter in Cropping Systems Sustainability:

In summary, improving soil quality for farming involves adopting practices that enhance soil organic matter content and overall soil health. Soil organic matter plays a pivotal role in sustaining cropping systems by promoting nutrient cycling, water retention, soil structure, microbial activity, carbon sequestration, and erosion prevention. By prioritizing soil organic matter management, farmers can optimize agricultural productivity while ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience of their farming operations.

Dr Himanshu Tiwari thank you for your contribution to the discussion

SOM affects the amount of water in a soil by influencing 1) water infiltration and percolation, 2) evaporation rates, and 3) increasing the soil water holding capacity. Surface residues also slow the rate of water evaporation from the soil and improve soil structure, which helps prevent soil crusting. Soil fertility can be further improved by incorporating cover crops that add organic matter to the soil, which leads to improved soil structure and promotes a healthy, fertile soil; by using green manure or growing legumes to fix nitrogen from the air through the process of biological nitrogen fixation. After ploughing and leveling, manure is applied to further stages of farming. Manuring is done to replenish the soil with nutrients and thus helps in the proper growth of the crop. Soil preparation makes an agricultural field fertile and ready for farming. Any addition of organic material helps improve soil quality. Organic material adds carbon to the soil and helps to keep soil aggregates separate and intact. When ploughing-in straw, try to avoid burying it all at plough depth. On the basis of soil parameters provided by HWSD seven key soil qualities important for crop production have been derived, namely: nutrient availability, nutrient retention capacity, rooting conditions, oxygen availability to roots, excess salts, toxicities, and workability. Organic matter can absorb heavy metals in the soils, which reduce toxicity of these metals to plants and reduce their escape to ground water. Similarly, SOM also adsorbs herbicides, which may inhibit contamination of surface and ground water. Trends in long-term crop yields show that as yield potential has increased, yields are often larger on soils with more organic matter compared to those on soils with less. Soil organic matter significantly improves the soil's capacity to store and supply essential nutrients (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium), and to retain toxic elements. It allows the soil to cope with changes in soil acidity, and helps soil minerals to decompose faster. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the most often reported attribute from long-term studies and is chosen as the most important indicator of soil quality and agronomic sustainability because of its impact on other physical, chemical and biological indicators of soil quality.

Perhaps attention can be paid to the stability of soil organic carbon and research can be conducted to increase the proportion of mineral bound organic carbon (MAOC). We are trying to add powdered carbonate rocks to soil to improve MAOC

Dr Zeyan Wu thank you for your contribution to the discussion

Soil organic matter significantly improves the soil's capacity to store and supply essential nutrients (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium), and to retain toxic elements. It allows the soil to cope with changes in soil acidity, and helps soil minerals to decompose faster. Soil organic matter plays a crucial role in maintaining sustainability of cropping systems by improving soil physical (texture, structure, bulk density, and water-holding capacity), chemical (nutrient availability, cation exchange capacity, reduced aluminum toxicity, and allelopathy), and biological.Trends in long-term crop yields show that as yield potential has increased, yields are often larger on soils with more organic matter compared to those on soils with less. Annual applications of composts and manures at rates of three to five tons per acre are common in organic farming systems. Such organic amendments add significant amounts of carbon to the soil and are generally associated with improved tilth, lower bulk density, and increased water infiltration. Incorporate organic materials such as compost, manure, cover crops, and crop residues into the soil to increase soil organic matter content. Organic matter improves soil structure, water retention, nutrient availability, and microbial activity. Organic matter can absorb heavy metals in the soils, which reduce toxicity of these metals to plants and reduce their escape to ground water. Similarly, SOM also adsorbs herbicides, which may inhibit contamination of surface and ground water. Another important global process in which organic matter plays a major role is the nitrogen cycle. It is of direct importance in agriculture because there is frequently not enough available nitrogen in soils for plants to grow their best. Soil organic matter is the fraction of the soil that consists of plant or animal tissue in various stages of breakdown (decomposition). Most of our productive agricultural soils have between 3 and 6% organic matter. Soil organic matter contributes to soil productivity in many different ways.