Soil fertility status of nine districts in the State has been documented and released as a book by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. This is expected to serve as an appropriate tool for macro-level planning and soil health maintenance in the State.
The book titled ‘GPS and GIS-based soil fertility appraisal for selected districts of Tamil Nadu – A monograph’ was released by Agricultural Production Commissioner and Principal Secretary (Agriculture), Sandeep Saxena.
The Department of Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry at TNAU and the Indian Institute of Soil Sciences, Bhopal conducted this research between 2010 and 2013. The project was sponsored by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture.
TNAU Vice-Chancellor K Ramasamy said the publication contains information which would be useful to researchers, planners, policy makers, extension workers of the State Agriculture department, fertiliser companies and farmers.
Information includes details of soil sample collections numbering around 3600, collected from nine districts such as Thanjavur, Nagapattinam, Thiruvarur, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Salem, Tiruchirapalli, Erode and Coimbatore and analysed for 12 parameters.