Spatial Fertilizer Recommendation Mapping Based on Soil Test Crop Response Equations for Important Crops Using GIS and GPS.

ABSTRACT

Soil health, food security, and environmental quality are the major problems faced by Indian agriculture. Soil nutrient variability is the big hurdle to higher crop productivity. The location-specific collective information of soil nutrient status should be generated. The soil test crop response equation embedded with fertilizer recommendation maps saves a major amount of plant nutrients applied to achieve the targeted yield. ArcGIS platform provides location-specific real-time thematic maps for the nutrient recommendations. Using GPS tool we collected 100 composite surface soil samples in Hanjihalli micro watershed, Hassan, Karnataka (India) and mapped nutrient recommendations for target yield in the GIS platform. The ready reckoner nutrient tables and nutrient recommendation maps were developed using interpolation technique for selected major grown field crops viz., maize, rice, ragi, and potato. The nutrient thematic maps will save a large amount of fertilizer for the specific target yield set up by the farmer.

KEYWORDS:

• Geographical Information system
• geographical positioning system
• soil test crop response and Arc-GIS

Acknowledgments

Authors acknowledge guide and members for providing great moral and informative support to carry out the study. The technical support provided by the staff and my friends for helping me with all support is greatly acknowledged. I acknowledge the farmers who helped me to collect all the information and soil samples from their fields with all support.

Supplementary material

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