Title SSAC-353.pdf ✅

Lecture No. 1 & 2 History of soil fertility and plant nutrition
Soil fertility “Soil fertility is the ability of the soil to supply essential plant nutrients during growth period of the plants, without toxic concentration of any nutrients”. i.e “the capacity of soil to supply nutrient in available to crop”. Soil productivity “Soil productivity is ability of soil to produce a particular crop or sequence of crops under a specified mgt system” i.e the crop producing capacity of soil”. • All the productive soils are fertile but all the fertile soils may not be productive. • Sometimes even if the soil is fertile, they are subjected to drought or other unsatisfactory growth factors or management practices.

History of development of soil fertility ✔ Theoprastus (372-287 BC) -Recommended heavy manuring to light soils and sparingly manuring to the heavy soils. -Noted that urine can enrich the value of humus -Plant grows well where dead bodied are buried. -Advocated mixing of soil into another i.e coarse soil into fine and fine soil intocoarse soil. ✔ Xenophon (400 BC) -Recommended spring cropping -Reported that microbial activities are their peak during spring