Micronutrient cations status in vegetable growing soils of subhumid and wettemperate zones of Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

Composite surface (0 to 0.15 m) soil samples were collected from vegetable growing fields in midhills subhumid and highhills wettemperate subagroclimatic zones of Himachal Pradesh. The soils in wet temperate zone of Himachal Pradesh were more acidic (pH 5.2 to 6.8) in contrast to soils in mid–hills subhumid zone (pH 5.8 to 7.5) sandy loam to clay loam in texture, medium to high in organic carbon content. Soils were medium in availableN, low to medium in availableP and medium to high in availableK. In 1 subhumid zone, the DTPAextractable micronutrients ranged between 0.64 to 11.0 mg kg for Zn, 0.14 to 1 1 1 2.80 mg kg for Cu, 10.6 to 70.8 mg kg for Fe and 2.1 to 34.9 mg kg for Mn, while in wettemperate zone 1 1 1 between 0.44 to 2.06 mg kg forZn, 0.02 to 3.60 mg kg for Cu, 22.8 to 96.6 mg kg for Fe and 2.5 to 40.0 mg 1 kg for Mn. Soils in some parts of wet temperate zone of Himachal Pradesh are inherently low in DTPA extractable Zn (19%), Cu (13%) and Mn (6%) while parts of sub humid zone are low in DTPAextractable Cu (16%) and Mn (5%). All the DTPA micronutrients showed positive correlation with organic carbon. DTPAFe and Mn showed a negative correlation with soil pH. Among mechanical separates, the availability of DTPACu and Mn was higher with finer soil fractions and decreased with coarser ones and reverse relation was observed with DTPAZn.