Publishing Date || 01 JUNE 2023
S O IL SCIENCE
15. Soil Organic Carbon
RAGINI PATIL, ROOPA K MUTTAPPANAVAR, GEETHA G P, DEEPA
KALAPPANAVAR
Corresponding Author Email ID: raginispatil44@gmail.com
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the carbon associated
with soil organic matter. SOC in soil exists mainly
in two pools viz., active and passive pools. Active
pool consists of living microorganisms and their
products and has short turnover rate, whereas
passive pool is more stable having high turnover
rate. The terrestrial ecosystem contains about
2500 Pg of carbon including both organic as well
as inorganic pool.
Carbon (from Latin: carbo “coal”) is a
chemical element with symbol C and atomic
number 6. It is one of the few elements
known since antiquity. Carbon is the 15th most
abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the
fourth most abundant element in the universe
by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen.
Carbon’s abundance, its unique diversity of
organic compounds, and its unusual ability to
form polymers at the temperatures commonly
encountered on earth enables this element
to serve as a common element of all known
life. It is the second most abundant element in
the human body by mass (about 18.5 %) after
oxygen.
Carbon is the building block of life. All living
things are made of elements, the most abundant
of which are, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous. Of these,
carbon is the best at joining with other elements
to form compounds necessary for life, such as
sugars, starches, fats, and proteins. Together, all
these forms of carbon account for approximately
half of the total dry mass of living things. Over
time, the plants die and decay, are harvested by
humans, or are burned either for energy or in
wildfires. All of these processes are fluxes that
can cycle carbon among various pools within
ecosystems and eventually releases it back to
the atmosphere. Viewing the Earth as a whole,
individual cycles like this are linked to others
involving oceans, rocks, etc. on a range of spatial
and temporal scales to form an integrated global
carbon cycle. Major carbon pools of the world
are presented in Fig. 1.
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The amount of SOC stored in a given soil
is dependent on the equilibrium between the
amount of C entering the soil and the amount
of C leaving the soil as carbon-based respiration
gases resulting from microbial mineralization
and to a lesser extent, leaching from the soil
as DOC. Locally, C can also be lost or gained
through soil erosion or deposition, leading to
the redistribution of soil C at local, landscape
and regional scales. Micro-organisms digest
up to 90 % of the organic carbon that enters a
soil in organic residues. Levels of SOC storage
is therefore mainly controlled by managing the
amount and type of organic residues that enter
the soil (i.e., the input of organic C to the soil
system) and minimizing the soil C losses.
SOC is divided into different pools as a
function of its physical and chemical stability.
Fast pool (labile or active pool) - After
addition of fresh organic carbon to the soil,
decomposition results in a large proportion of
the initial biomass being lost in 1–2 years.
Intermediate pool - Comprises microbially
processed organic carbon that is partially
stabilized on mineral surfaces and/or protected
within aggregates, with turnover times in the
range 10-100 years.
Slow pool (refractory or stable pool) - highly
stabilized SOC, enters a period of very slow
turnover of 100 to >1 000 years.
Soil organic carbon sequestration is the
process by which carbon is fixed from the
atmosphere via plants or organic residues
and stored in the soil. When dealing with CO2,
SOC sequestration involves three stages: 1) the
removal of CO2 from the atmosphere via plant
photosynthesis; 2) the transfer of carbon from
CO2 to plant biomass; and 3) the transfer of
carbon from plant biomass to the soil where it is
stored in the form of SOC in the most labile pool.
 AGROBIOS NEWSLETTER Publishing Date || 01 JUNE 2023

FIG. 1. Major carbon pools of the world

FIG. 2. Different components of the soil carbon pool (MRT=mean residence

time; SIC = Soil inorganic C; SOC = Soil organic matter)

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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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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.