Understanding Soil Quality Dynamics for Improving Rice Yield in Farmer’s Field

A roving survey was conducted during Kharif 2023 to assess the constraints in rice crop production of district Kaithal, Haryana. A total of 20 soil samples from the surveyed sites were collected in triplicate for further analysis. The pH(1:2) and EC(1:2) and OC of the surveyed sites ranged from 7.84 to 8.98, 0.19 to 0.66 dS/m and 0.44 to 0.67% respectively. The surveyed soils were non saline in nature. Most of the surveyed sites (around 70%) were found medium in organic carbon status. Soil available nitrogen ranged from 145.36-194.13 kg N/ha, available phosphorus 11.54-19.27 kg P/ha and available potassium 323.2-398 kg K2O/ha in the surveyed sites. The grain yield of rice varieties ranged from 2.85-8.85 t/ha whereas the straw yield of rice varieties ranged from 5.0-12.0 t/ha. The commonly grown rice varieties in scented group were PB 1121, PB 1509, PB 1718, PB 1847 and CSR 30 while the common high yielding non-scented variety and hybrid was PR114 and Vnr 2222, respectively. The constraints include low available nitrogen status of soils, high pH and sodicity at some sites, improper and untimely urea (N fertilizer) application. No farmer was applying organic fertilizers.