| The primary objective of soil site suitability evaluation is to predict the potential and limitation of land for crop production. It is essential to select crops for cultivation according to the soil suitability, so that maximum profit may be achieved while maintaining the ecological sustainability. The importance of soil- site suitability evaluation has grown multifold considering the continuous depletion of soil as a resource under conventional agricultural practice. Under IBM-IORF Sustainability Project at Nadia district, West Bengal, India, soil site suitability of 12 major vegetable and horticulture crops was undertaken to assess whether the presently grown crops are appropriate for the area, and to ensure that the land use plan adopted by the farmers provides better economic returns and livelihood sustenance, under the existential climate change impact. Percent area under highly to moderate suitable for different crops were as follows: Paddy (34 % area), Potato (23 % area), Tomato (39 % area), Bean (40 % area), Chilli (100 % area), Carrot (40 % area), Green peas (40 % area), Onion (37 % area), Cabbage (100 % area), Banana (34 % area), Guava (18 % area) and Papaya (20 % area). Evaluation revealed that soil fertility formed the major bottleneck towards crop cultivation especially due to the poor microbial dynamics in soil, leading to improper nutrient mineralization and availability in the soil solution. Hence, improvement on this aspect can actually promote the suitability aspect of these soils with respect to the presently cultivated crops.
Keywords: soil site suitability, land use, sustainable agriculture, land suitability sub-classes
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