Development of a soil biological quality index for soils of semi-arid tropics

Abstract

Agricultural intensification, an inevitable process to feed the ever-increasing population, affects soil quality due to management-induced changes. To measure the soil quality in terms of soil functioning, several attempts were made to develop a soil quality index (SQI) based on a set of soil attributes. However, there is no universal consensus protocol available for SQI, and the role of soil biological indicators in SQI is meagre. Therefore, the present work aims to develop a unitless soil biological quality index (SBQI) scaled between 0 and 10, which would be a major component of SQI in the future. The long-term organic manure amended (OM), integrated nutrient management enforced (INM), synthetic fertilizer applied (IC), and unfertilized control (control) soils from three different predominant soil types of the location (Tamil Nadu state, India) were chosen for this. The soil organic carbon, microbial biomass carbon, labile carbon, protein index, dehydrogenase activity, and substrate-induced respiration were used to estimate the SBQI. Five different SBQI methods, viz. simple additive (SBQI1 and SBQI2), scoring function (SBQI3), principal component analysis-based statistical modelling (SBQI4), and quadrant-plot-based method (SBQI5), were developed to estimate the biological quality as a unitless scale. All five methods have the same resolution to discriminate the soils and INM ≈ OM > IC > control is the relative trend being followed in all the soil types based on the SBQIs. All five methods were further validated for their efficiency in 25 farmers' soils of the location and proved that these methods can scale the biological health of the soil. Among the five SBQIs, we recommend SBQI5, which relates the variables to each other to scale the biological health of the soil.