Dear Nikhil,

You should firstly consider the soil properties, topography, and climate conditions because those are among factors affecting soil C content. There are some practices that can help in increasing SOC such as organic fertilizers and amendments (such as green and brown manure and recycled organic wastes) beside inorganic fertilizers, rotations, minimizing tillage and erosion, suitable irrigation and any other good management practices that increase SOC and decrease the loss. So increasing SOC is integrated practices not only.

More important is to see ,what means do we adopt to deposit carbon into passive pool of SOC,regardless of methods we practice. And a greater emphasis is to be given to trigger off carbon diversion / carbon partitioning ability of the crops in relation to different inputs ,so that carbon deposited into the roots continues to motivate rhizosphere microbiome,much to keep maintaining the carbon pool of the soil much elevated level..

Dear,

Crop rotation, green manuring, legumes crops, animals manures, biofertilizers, sugarcane press mud, cultivation of berseem, shaftal, alfalfa, biochar, are the ways of increasing organic carbon content

Please also have a look at this useful RG link.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_we_increase_rapidly_organic_matter_in_soil_can_any_one_sugest_experiments

Dear All,

Thank you for your valuable inputs and referring me to earlier discussions on this topic. I agree that there has to be integrated set of practices.

However, is there any study which monitors soil organic carbon to measure effectiveness of the practices prescribed? E.g. Look at this example (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24086-8)

Add to what colleagues pointed out, balanced fertilization, Zero tillage or conservation agriculture, plowing crop residues within the soil, cover the soil with crop residues.

You might find reading this article useful Article Nutrient availability limits carbon sequestration in arable soils

So many things could be known from all these fruitful discussions.

Friends, what is your opinion, whether increase in soil organic carbon pool will any way expand the sink capacity for nutrients as well.If so , what are the underlying mechanisms..??

I would request you to refer to the attached chapter. Hope it may help you to get some insight of ways on SOC enhancement