Author(s):

A Karthik, VK Duraisamy and AH Prakash

Abstract: Agricultural lands are facing major issues like reduction in soil fertility and soil health as due to mono cropping, improper use of synthetic fertilizers, use of poor quality water for irrigation, soil erosion and loss of nutrients. These created a necessity to improve and maintain soil health in sustainable manner for better crop production. In this context, a study was framed to evaluate the different biochars on soil physical, chemical and biological properties and its effect on cotton. The field trial was conducted at TNAU in collaboration with ICAR-CICR, Regional station, Coimbatore during the years 2017-18 and 2018-19. The experiments were conducted with three sources of biochars viz., maize biochar, cotton biochar and Prosopis biochar under different doses of 2.0 t ha^-1, 3.0 t ha^-1 and 4.0 t ha^-1 respectively. The study revealed that application of biochar prepared from different biomass significantly influenced the soil physico-chemical properties. Application of prosopis biochar and cotton biochar @ 4.0 t ha^-1 significantly increased organic carbon, cation exchange capacity, porosity and reduction in bulk density of soils during both the years of study over control plots. This inferred that Biochar when applied as soil amendment not only improves soil fertility, which in turn keeps the soil in a sustainable manner for a long term to crop production.

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