Restoring soil quality and carbon sequestration potential of waterlogged saline land using subsurface drainage technology to achieve land degradation neutrality in India

Raj Mukhopadhyay; Ram Kishor Fagodiya; Bhaskar Narjary; Arijit Barman; Kailash Prajapat; Satyendra Kumar; Devendra Singh Bundela; Parbodh Chander Sharma

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163959

Restoring soil quality and carbon sequestration potential of waterlogged saline land using subsurface drainage technology to achieve land degradation neutrality in India

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Aug 10:885:163959. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163959. Epub 2023 May 4.

Authors

Raj Mukhopadhyay¹, Ram Kishor Fagodiya², Bhaskar Narjary³, Arijit Barman⁴, Kailash Prajapat³, Satyendra Kumar³, Devendra Singh Bundela³, Parbodh Chander Sharma³

Affiliations

¹ ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal 132001, India. Electronic address: raj.mukhopadhyay@icar.gov.in.
² ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal 132001, India. Electronic address: ram.iari4874@gmail.com.
³ ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal 132001, India.
⁴ ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal 132001, India; ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning Regional Centre, Jorhat 785004, India.

PMID: 37146830
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163959

Abstract

Subsurface drainage (SSD) has been proved to be an effective technology to reclaim waterlogged saline soils. Three SSD projects were implemented in Haryana, India in 2009, 2012 and 2016 to study the long term effect of SSD (10, 7 and 3 years) operation on restoring productivity and carbon sequestration potential of degraded waterlogged saline soils under prevalent rice-wheat cropping system. These studies indicated that successful operation of SSD improved soil quality parameters such as bulk density, BD (from 1.58 to 1.52 Mg m^-3), saturated hydraulic conductivity, SHC (from 3.19 to 5.07 cm day^-1); electrical conductivity, EC_e (from 9.72 to 2.18 dS m^-1), soil organic carbon, OC (from 0.22 to 0.34 %), dehydrogenase activity, DHA (from 15.44 to 31.65 μg g^-1 24 h^-1), and alkaline phosphatase, ALPA (from 16.66 to 40.11 μg P-NP g^-1 h^-1) in upper soil surface (0-30 cm). The improved soil quality resulted in increased rice-wheat system yield (rice equivalent yield) by 328 %, 465 % and 665 % at Kahni, Siwana Mal and Jagsi sites, respectively. Studies also revealed that carbon sequestration potential of degraded land increased with the implementation of SSD projects. The principal component analysis (PCA) showed that % OC, EC_e, ALPA, available N and K content were the most contributing factor for soil quality index (SQI). The overall result of the studies showed that SSD technology holds great potential to improve soil quality, increase crop productivity, farmers' income and ensure land degradation neutrality and food security in waterlogged saline areas of western Indo Gangetic Plain of India. Hence, it can be concluded that large scale adoption of SSD may fulfill the promise "No poverty, Zero hunger, and Life on land" sustainable development goals of United Nation in degraded waterlogged saline areas.

Keywords: Carbon sequestration potential; Carbon stock; Principal component analysis; Soil quality; Sub-surface drainage; Waterlogged saline soils.