Effect of Amendments, Zinc Solubilizing Bacteria and Zinc Sulphate on Physicochemical Properties and Zinc Availability in Sodic Soil

Abstract

Excess sodium levels of sodic soil can adversely affect soil structure and disturb the availability of nutrients for plant growth. Micronutrients particularly zinc exhibit low levels of solubility in sodic soils which may results in Zn deficiency in rice. Different attempts have been made to increase the solubility of zinc in sodic soils. Hence an incubation study was conducted to understand the availability of soil Zn due to the application of amendments, zinc sulfate and zinc solubilizing bacteria. The soil samples were collected at 15, 30 and 45 days after incubation. The results revealed that the application of amendments significantly reduced the pH, ESP and increased the OC, EC of incubated soil. The exchangeable cations viz., Ca, Mg, K increased and exchangeable Na content was decreased by the application of amendments. DTPA-Zn increased at 15 days after incubation (DAI) in ZnSO4 alone applied treatments and it was drastically reduced to the initial level with the advancement of the incubation period. However, in amendments and zinc sulfate combinedly applied treatments, the DTPA- Zn level increased at 15 DAI and almost maintained throughout the incubation period. Increased DTPA- Zn was observed in zinc solubilizing bacteria alone applied treatments. The application of amendments and ZnSO4 significantly influenced the distribution of different fractions of Zn in soil. They found in order of a WSEX-Zn < OM-Zn

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2019.000326

Pages

652 - 656

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords