Soil Science Agricultural And Environmental Prospectives

Soil is the most important natural non-renewable resource developed over a longer period of time due to weathering of rocks and subsequently enrichment of organic matter. Soil provides habitat for numerous microorganisms and serves as a natural medium for plant growth, thereby providing the plants with anchorage, nutrients and water to sustain the growth. Soil also serves as a universal sink for all types of pollutants, purifies ground water and is a major reserve of carbon in the universe. The role of soils to provide ecosystem services, maintenance of environmental/human health and ensuring the food security makes it as the most important and basic natural resource. Soil Science helps us to elaborate and understand how the soils provide all these services. Soil Science also provides us the basic knowledge dealing with the origin of the soil parent material, weathering of parent material and the formation of soils, morphological, physico-chemical and biological features of soils, classification of soils and role of soils in the provision and maintenance of ecosystem services, food security and environmental quality. This book encompasses the various processes, functions and behaviour of soils very comprehensively to acquaint the students of soil, plant and environmental sciences about their role to perform different agricultural and environmental functions.

Soil is a complex body that exists as many types, each with diverse properties that may vary widely across time and space as a function of many factors. This complexity makes the evaluation of soil quality much more challenging than that of water or air quality. Evaluation of soil quality now considers environmental implications as well as economic productivity, seeking to be more holistic in its approach. Thus, soil quality research draws from a wide range of disciplines, blending the approaches of biologists, physicists, chemists, ecologists, economists and agronomists, among others. This book presents a broad perspective of soil quality that includes these various perspectives and gives a strong theoretical basis for the assessment of soil quality. A short glossary provides definitions for terms used throughout the book.

This edited volume, Soil Contamination - Recent Advances and Future Perspectives, provides a comprehensive overview of soil contamination. Chapters address such topics as using biochar to improve soil quality, electrochemical analysis of pesticides and heavy metals in the environment and food, nitrate leaching in soils, the ability of bacteria to remove heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and much more. This book is a useful resource that opens new possible research paths for further novel developments in the field.

This respected manual has enhanced students' knowledge in the laboratory setting for more than 40 years. To keep up with the ever-changing world in which we live, this edition now features modern techniques and procedures, with special emphasis on the role that soil plays in environmental concerns. Laboratory Manual for Soil Science summons investigation into the importance of soil management and conservation towards human survival on this planet.In this edition, the exercises have been refined but the theme still focuses on the application for agricultural and environmental areas. Reviewer comments: "The best manual commercially available"/ "One of the best manuals seen."; "Have used this manual for years and will continue to do so."; "Has been using the manual for 13 years and is pleased with its quality"

This books presents an updated compilation on fundamental interaction mechanisms of microbial communities with the plant roots and rhizosphere (belowground) and leaves and aerial parts (aboveground). Plant rhizopshere recruits its own microbial composition that survive there and help plants grow and develop better under biotic and abiotic conditions. Similar is the case with the beneficial microorganisms which are applied as inoculants with characteristic functions. The mechanism of plant-microbe interactions is interesting phenomenon in biological perspectives with numerous implications in the fields. The First volume focuses on the basic and fundamental mechanisms that have been worked out by the scientific communities taking into account different plant-microbe systems. This includes methods that decipher mechanisms at cellular, physiological, biochemical and molecular levels and the functions that are the final outcome of any beneficial or non-beneficial interactions in crop plants and microbes. Recent advances in this research area is covered in different book chapters that reflect the impact of microbial interactions on soil and plant health, dynamics of rhizosphere microbial communities, interaction mechanisms of microbes with multiple functional attributes, microbiome of contrasting crop production systems (organic vs conventional), mechanisms behind symbiotic and pathogenic interactions, endophytic (bacterial and fungal) interaction and benefits, rhizoplane and endosphere associations, signalling cascades and determinants in rhizosphere, quorum sensing in bacteria and impact on interaction, mycorrhizal interaction mechanisms, induced disease resistance and plant immunization, interaction mechanisms that suppress disease and belowground microbial crosstalk with plant rhizosphere. Methods based on multiphasic and multi-omics approaches were discussed in detail by the authors. Content-wise, the book offers an advanced account on various aspects of plant-microbe interactions and valuable implications in agro-ecological perspectives.

This book focuses on the pros and cons of amendment materials to restore the functioning of soil resources. It presents a holistic overview on affected land revitalization, clean up and revegetation using these amendments that could be implemented in the long term management of the soil-plant-atmosphereanimal continuum.

Sustainable agriculture is a key concept for scientists, researchers, and agricultural engineers alike. This book focuses on the FAM- project (FAM Munich Research Network on Agroecosystems) of the 1990s as a means to assessing, forecasting, and evaluating changes in the agroecosystems that are necessary for agricultural sustainability. The management of two separate management systems: an organic and an integrated farming system are described to provide an interdisciplinary approach Changes of matter fluxes in soils, changes of trace gas fluxes from soils, precision farming in a small scale heterogen landscape, influence of management changes on flora and fauna, as well as the development of agroecosystem models, the assessment of soil variability and the changes in nutrient status are important aspects of this book. * Contains detailed results and insight of a long-time project on agricultural sustainability * Provides an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive understanding by scientists and researchers of soil, plants, agriculture, and environment * Includes an international perspective