National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS)
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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Most of the land is kept fallow due to deficiency in soil moisture availability and water holding capacity of soil. This deficiency is mainly due to insufficient rainfall and lack of natural water resources. The water holding capacity of a soil is of great value to agriculture, because it provides a simple means of determining moisture content required for good plant growth. Area with poor physical properties can be brought under cultivation, by changing the physical property of the soil. Changing the physical properties of soil will increase the water holding capacity, but changing the properties for huge area is practically impossible. This can be made possible by considering small area under greenhouse which will give higher economic return compared to open field. Study was undertaken to assess the influence of growing media physical properties on the characteristics curve and water holding capacity. The growing media properties were determined for the three treatments (T1-Soil, T2-Soil+Sawdust (2:1), T3-Soil+Coirpith (2:1)). The textural class of experimental plot was sandy loam soil. Maximum water holding capacity among the treatments was observed as 65 per cent for T3 followed by 60 per cent for T2 and 33 per cent for T1. Quadratic equation was developed for three treatments to directly predict available soil moisture content from the calibration curve which will be useful for scheduling irrigation. Out of these three treatments carried T2 and T3 was found best with minimal usage of water.
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