Easy Identifications of Soil Modifiers

Abstract

Although the presence of soil modifiers such as gypsum, calcium carbonate, palygorskite and zeolites, is being adequately reported in soils for the last two decades by the Indian soil and earth scientists, their unique role in the formation of soils in tropical humid climates, in re-defining in saline sodic soils, in land evaluation and impairing hydraulic properties, in fine-tuning the exiting soil classification scheme and also the management practices to enhance and sustain the productivity of Indian soils is recently realized. Use of sophisticated analytical instruments such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique, soil thin section studies and by observing the morphological features by scanning electron microscope (SEM) is required to identify the sand, silt and clay-sized soil modifiers. But such instrumental facilities are rarely available in national soil laboratories. In view of their immense impact in changing the pedo-chemical environment of soils, emergence of simple analytical methods became imperative. In this chapter, few simple but useful chemical methods, which can help planning better use and management of soils, are discussed.