Micronutrient Cations Status in Vegetable Growing Soils of Sub-Humid and Wet-Temperate Zones of Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

Composite surface (0 to 0.15 m) soil samples were collected from vegetable growing fields in mid-hills subhumid and high-hills wet-temperate sub-agroclimatic 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 available-N, low to medium in available-P and medium to high in available-K. In sub-humid zone, the DTPA-extractable micronutrients ranged between 0.64 to 11.0 mg kg^-1 for Zn, 0.14 to 2.80 mg kg^-1 for Cu, 10.6 to 70.8 mg kg^-1 for Fe and 2.1 to 34.9 mg kg^-1 for Mn, while in wet-temperate zone between 0.44 to 2.06 mg kg^-1 for Zn, 0.02 to 3.60 mg kg^-1 for Cu, 22.8 to 96.6 mg kg^-1 for Fe and 2.5 to 40.0 mg kg^-1 for Mn. Soils in some parts of wet temperate zone of Himachal Pradesh are inherently low in DTPAextractable Zn (19%), Cu (13%) and Mn (6%) while parts of sub humid zone are low in DTPA-extractable Cu (16%) and Mn (5%). All the DTPA micronutrients showed positive correlation with organic carbon. DTPA-Fe and Mn showed a negative correlation with soil pH. Among mechanical separates, the availability of DTPA-Cu and Mn was higher with finer soil fractions and decreased with coarser ones and reverse relation was observed with DTPA-Zn.