Assessment of Soil Nutrient Dynamics in Sugarcane Cultivation Areas of Navsari District: Implications for Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Sentinel 2 satellite data from the year 2021 were acquired from the Copernicus site to identify the sugarcane producing area in the Navsari district. Hybrid classification approach i.e., supervised and unsupervised with ground truth data were applied using ERDAS IMAGINE software. After image classification, 2.5 km x 2.5 km grid was prepared in Q-GIS software which along with classified sugarcane area were overlapped for site identification. Then, random soil surface and sub-surface samples were collected with reference from grid of intensive sugarcane growing area. The available nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, DTPA-Fe, DTPA-Mn, DTPA-Zn and DTPA-Cu of surface soil ranged from 132.19 to 428.65 kg ha-1, 18.48 to 107.32 kg ha-1, 202.34 to 359.39 kg ha-1, 0.97 to 29.90 ppm, 1.10 to 29.63 ppm, 0.20 to 6.89 ppm and 1.02 to 11.69 ppm while sub-surface soil varied from 101.91 to 388.62 kg ha-1, 10.16 to 99.57 kg ha-1, 138.66 to 323.35 kg ha-1, 0.35 to 24.97 ppm, 0.20 to 29.08 ppm, 0.05 to 3.64 ppm and 0.21 to 8.07 ppm respectively. The soils of sugarcane growing area of Navsari district showed low OC, available N and S while other nutrients were normal in range for sugarcane cultivation.