Publishing Date || 01 JUNE 2023
Factors/practices that degrade soil carbon
level
 Changes in land cover
 Deforestation
 Increased tillage
 Unsustainable agriculture practices
Factors/practices that improve soil carbon
level
 Cover crops/green manure crops
 Crop rotation
 Perennial forage crops
 Zero or reduced tillage
 Agroforestry
 Organic manures
Soil organic carbon fractions
 Particulate organic carbon
 Water soluble carbon
 Permanganate oxidizable carbon
 Microbial biomass carbon
 Humic substances
Particulate organic carbon
 Coarse fraction of soil organic matter,
dominated with less than 53mm fraction
 More stable carbon pool
 Intermediate between fresh plant litter &
humified
 Important pool of available carbon, indicator
16. Soil Nutrient Mining
DEEPA KALAPPANAVAR, RAGINI PATIL, ROOPA K MUTTAPPANAVAR,
GEETHA G P
Corresponding Author Email ID: deepakalappanavar77@gmail.com
The term “Nutrient Mining” is used when the
quantity of soil nutrients removed by a crop from
an agricultural field exceeds the amount of the
nutrient that is recycled back and/ or replenished
to the field.
Mining of nutrients from soil is observed as
most pivotal factor towards factor productivity
of agriculture, proactively threatening the long-
term sustainability. This is the issue, perhaps
both developing and developed countries are
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AGROBIOS NEWSLETTER
of soil quality
Water soluble carbon
 Easily degraded by microorganisms
 Significance of transport of nutrients
 Plays key role in soil formation
 Bio-geochemistry & redistribution with soil
depth
Microbial biomass carbon
 Living portion of the soil organic matter
 Comprises approximately 2% of the total organic
matter
 Easily dismissed as of minor importance in the
soil
Permanganate oxidizable carbon
 Reactive Carbon
 Readily degradable by microorganisms
 Significantly related to particulate organic carbon,
soil microbial biomass carbon
 More sensitive to management changes affecting
soil C
 Used as an indicator of change produced by
cropping and soil management practices that
manipulates SOM content.
Humic substances: Humic substances are
relatively stable, high molecular weight, brown to
black coloured substances formed by secondary
synthesis reactions. These includes humic acid,
fulvic acid and humin.
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confronting, ever since monocropping is replaced
by multiple cropping. in the past, number of tools
have been suggested to compute the magnitude
of nutrient mining in both, spatial as well as
temporal domains. but, no universal method of
assessing nutrient mining is so far followed, and
above all, such efforts are neither crop-based nor
soil based. I have the following set of questions,
my dear friends to respond at your end. I am
sure, your valuable inputs will unravel some
astonishing facts about nutrient mining.
 AGROBIOS NEWSLETTER
Intensive cropping systems remove
substantial quantities of plant nutrients from soil
during continued agricultural production round
the year. The basic principle of maintaining the
fertility status of a soil under high intensity crop
production systems is to annually replenish those
nutrients that are removed from the field.
Indeed, this becomes more relevant in
the absence of the measures for adequate
replenishment of the depleted nutrient pools
through the removal of crop residues from
agricultural fields (Sanyal 2014).
Nutrient mining causes a decline in the
native soil fertility and may seriously jeopardize
future food security of the country. Unfortunately,
the concern for nutrient mining in Indian soils is
largely limited to the scientific community and
has not been integrated adequately with the
crop production practices.
The nutrient mining issues concern the
nutrients that are less mobile in soils and
have higher potential of staying in the soil. For
example, nitrogen (N) is highly mobile in the soil
and has the highest probability, among the major
nutrients, to be lost from the soil system through
volatilization and leaching, among others.
The Indian soils, being in the sub-tropical
region coupled with the preponderance of tillage
practices, are rarely sufficient in N. Nitrogen is
generally applied in adequate quantities to the
crops, and “nitrogen mining” is not frequently
discussed as crop production relies more on
adequate external application through fertilizer/
manure sources rather than on the native
soil reserve of N. The input-output balance
calculations for N, at the regional or the national
scale, generally show positive balance in soils
(Katyal 2001).
Nutrient Mining – Balancing “Additions” and
“Removals”
The biggest entry on the plus side of the nutrient
balance equation is the native soil reserve of a
nutrient at any given point of time. The nutrients
may come from several sources including parent
material, irrigation water, crop residues, or as
by-products of natural events. The other two
significant entries on the plus side are external
application of manures and fertilizer.
Although all the additions are dynamic
in nature, the proportion of nutrient addition
through irrigation water, crop residue, etc., to the
total reserve of a nutrient in a soil is low. This is
particularly true for nutrients like K. In common
banking parlance, this could be considered
as a “fixed deposit” that is saved for posterity.
Manures and fertilizer application to soil, on the
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other hand, could be considered as “regular
deposit” that is immediately available for use by
the plants.
Maintenance of soil fertility requires that we
use the “regular” deposits for crop production
without significantly depleting the “fixed”
deposits. The largest minus in the nutrient
balance equation is the crop uptake and removal.
Crop uptake and removal becomes synonymous
when crop residues are largely removed from
the fields along with the harvest of the economic
products.
This is particularly true for most field crops
grown in India as there are a large number of
competitive uses of crop residues. Based on the
achieved yields, crops remove nutrients from
the soil and that constitutes the largest depleting
factor of soil nutrients. Besides crop removal,
there are other avenues of losses of nutrients
from the soil such as volatilization, leaching,
erosion, run-off, etc.
These losses could contribute significantly
to the negative side of the nutrient balance
equation under specific crop growing
conditions. Volatilization of surface applied urea
in calcareous soils or leaching of K in coarse
textured soils are examples of typical growing
environment-induced losses of nutrients from
soil that could be easily rectified by modifying
the management decisions.
Such nutrient input-output information could
be used to develop nutrient balance information
at local, regional or national scale. This may help
in fertilizer application decision at the field scale
to fertilizer import and distribution policies at the
regional or the national scale.
Nutrient depletion in soils adversely
affects soil quality and reduces crop yield and
consequently poses a potential threat to global
food security and agricultural sustainability.
With an emphasis on human-induced nutrient
depletion, this paper described the causality
among soil nutrient depletion, soil quality,
crop production, socio-economic variables,
and environmental condition. Then, global soil
nutrient budgets of nitrogen (N), phosphorus
(P), and potassium (K) were estimated for wheat
(Triticum aestivum L.), rice (Oryza sativa), maize
(Zea mays L.), and barley (Hordeum vulgare)
production for the year 2000. As a result, there
were unbalanced fertilization with surplus N
in some developing countries and insufficient
inputs in many developing and all least developed
countries. Globally, soil nutrient deficits were
estimated at an average rate (kg ha1 yr1) of 18.7
N, 5.1 P, and 38.8 K, covering 59%, 85%, and 90%
of harvested area in the year 2000, respectively,
and annual total nutrient deficit was 5.5 Tg (1 Tg

Publishing Date || 01 JUNE 2023
= 1012 g) N, 2.3 Tg P, and 12.2 Tg K, coupled with
a total potential global production loss of 1,136
Tg yr1. Besides socio-economic factors, the soil
nutrient depletion can be attributed to insufficient
fertilizer use, unbalanced fertilization, and
nutrient depletion-induced soil fertility problems.
Soil fertility problems associated with human-
induced nutrient depletion are widespread
worldwide.
Nutrient mining in agriculture cannot be
avoided altogether. Indeed, different soils,
under similar cropping systems and comparable
management practices, will differ considerably
in their inherent buffer powers to withstand the
stress arising from “nutrient mining”. In other
17. Biological Sickness of Agricultural
Soils
ROOPA K MUTTAPPANAVAR, GEETHA G P, DEEPA KALAPPANAVAR,
RAGINI PATIL
Corresponding Author Email ID: roopakm6813@gmail.com
Introduction
Monoculture over a long period of time reduces
growth, yield and quality of many field crops. It
also builds up soil borne pathogen and parasite
populations coupled with a shift in composition
of soil microbial community. Soil microorganisms
are the key components of natural and agricultural
ecosystems, which contribute to chemical and
biological processes including break-down of
organic matter, carbon and nitrogen cycles,
stabilization of soil aggregates and degradation
of environmental pollutants. The composition
and abundance of soil microbes are controlled
by soil properties (Soil temperature, moisture,
aeration and pH), but also by higher plants
through rhizo deposition and accumulation of
leaf and root debris. In this way, plants promote
the development of beneficial microbes such as
nitrogen fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi.
On the contrary, it also favours the spread of
soil-borne pathogens, plant parasitic nematodes
and deleterious rhizobacteria. The assumption
that soil sickness is due to the accumulation of
pathogens in the soil which was proposed after
the observation that soil sterilization restores
crop productivity in soil. Basically, soil sickness
caused by any microorganisms in the soil to
deteriorate its physical, chemical and biological
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AGROBIOS NEWSLETTER
words, the degree of soil vulnerability varies
(Sanyal 2014).
Multiple cropping systems and management
practices adopted by farmers on numerous
soil types in the country further complicate
the nutrient mining scenario. Therefore, the
allowable range of nutrient mining under variable
climate-soil-crop-management domain needs to
be assessed, at least at the regional scale.
A national effort to address the nutrient
mining may go a long way to maintain the quality
of our soils for the posterity and to ensure the
food security of the future generations.
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properties is known as biological sickness of soil.
Biological Problems in Agricultural Soils
1. Soil organic carbon (SOC) and microbial
population: The main source of energy
for soil microorganisms and a trigger for
nutrient availability through mineralization
is SOC. Humus participates in aggregate
stability, nutrient and water holding capacity.
Organic acids are commonly released from
decomposing organic residues and manures
which prevents phosphorus fixation by clay
minerals and improve its plant availability,
especially in soils of tropical and subtropical
region.
The reduced microbial biomass activity and
nutrient mineralization is due to shortage of
energy sources which is mainly due to the
direct effect of poor SOC. Reduced aggregate
stability, drainage, airflow and infiltration in
non-calcareous soils. Low SOC results in
less diversity in soil biota with a risk of the
food chain equilibrium being disrupted,
which can cause disturbance in the soil
environment (Pest attack, disease spread
and accumulation of toxic substances).
2. Earthworms: Earthworms play a key role in