Investigating the Relationship Between Soil Enzyme Activities and Soil Nutrients

Abstract

Soil enzymes mediate the transformation of organic matter into nutrient-rich compounds and play a central role in energy transfer. Their activity influences the recovery of organic matter, soil structure, microbial biomass and overall microbial activity. The present study was conducted during January, 2023 to April, 2025 at Post Graduate laboratory, College of Agriculture, Pune with an objective to find out relationship between soil enzyme activities with soil nutrients of sugarcane ratoon. The study focused on dominant sugarcane growing districts in Maharashtra state, under different sugar recovery zones viz., high, medium and low. A total of 180 farmers were selected from these districts.  Among these 90 farmers followed long term in-situ sugarcane trash management system while the other 90 adopted long term in-situ sugarcane trash burning system, which they had been implementing for the past ten years. After harvest of sugarcane ratoon, the soil samples collected from selected sites at the depth of 0-30 cm where the active root zone of sugarcane exist and related data was collected during the year 2022-23 through a structured survey, ensuring a thorough understanding of the farming practices and their impact on soil biological properties. Furthermore, a correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationships between soil enzyme activities and soil nutrients. Enzyme activities viz., dehydrogenase, urease, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase and β-glucosidase were positively correlated with organic matter in both sugarcane trash management and burning practices. Meanwhile, urease activities showed a positive correlation with nitrogen. Acid and alkaline phosphatase showed a positive correlation with phosphorus.