Soil Quality Near Indian Oil Corporation Limited Pol Depot Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, State of India

Introduction

Soil is the most vital and precious natural resource that sustains life on the earth. It takes almost 1000 years to produce an inch of top soil (Chandra & Singh, 2009). One of the major concerns in today's world is the pollution and contaminations of soil. The degradation of soil has stared occurring both due to natural and human induced factors which in turn affecting the productivity. As human population continue to increase, human disturbance of the earth's ecosystem to produce food and fiber will place greater demand on soils to supply essential nutrients. The soils native ability to supply sufficient nutrients has decreased with higher plant productivity levels associated with increased human demand for food (Havlin et al., 2010). Therefore one of the greatest challenges today is to develop and implement soil, crop and nutrients management technologies that enhance the plant productivity and the quality of soil, water and air. If we do not improve the productive capacity of our fragile soils, we cannot continue to support the food and fiber demands of our growing population. With the introduction of green revolution technologies the modern agriculture is getting more and more dependent upon steady supply of synthetic inputs (mainly fertilizers) which are product of fossil fuel. Excessive and imbalanced use of chemical fertilizers has adversely affected the soil, causing decrease in organic carbon, reduction in microbial flora of soil, increasing acidity and alkalinity and hardening of soil (Jain, 2009). This situation contributes to the considerable loss of soil fertility.

The soil types of the district are broadly divided into four categories namely coarse shallow soil; medium black soil; deep black soil and reddish soil occupying about 38, 41, 13 and 8 percent of the cultivated area respectively. In the first two categories, soil moisture is the predominant limiting factor affecting productivity of crops particularly under rainfed condition.