Soil Quality Index as Affected by Integrated Nutrient Management in the Himalayan Foothills

Soil quality assessment serves as an index for appraising soil sustainability under varied management approaches. Our current investigation was oriented to establish a minimum data set (MDS) of indicators through the selection apt scoring functions each indicator, thus evaluating in Himalayan foothills. The experiment conducted during two consecutive years, viz. 2016 and 2017, comprised 13 treatments encompassing different combinations chemical fertilizers, organic manure, biofertilizers, (i) control, (ii) 20 kg P + PSB (Phosphorus solubilizing bacteria), (iii) Rhizobium, (iv) Rhizobium+ FYM, (v) 0.5 Mo PSB, (vi) (vii) Rhizobium (viii) 40 kg@ (ix) (x) (xi) (xii) (xiii) FYM. Evaluating physical, chemical, biological indicators, integrated module inorganic fertilization reflected significant improvement characteristics such water holding capacity, available nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, molybdenum, carbon fractions encircling microbial biomass (MBC), total bacterial fungal count. A principal component analysis (PCA) executed reduction multidimensional ensued by transformation selected indicators. (SQI) established exhibited variation 0.105 0.398, while magnitude share pertaining key influencing encircled capacity (WHC), dehydrogenase activity (DHA), bacteria count, P. that received nutrient package higher SQI (T10—0.398; T13—0.372; T7—0.307) comparison control treatment (T1—0.105). An enhanced put forth all edge any conjunctive reduced synthetic fertilizers with prime involvement over sole application fertilizers.