Fertility Status of Soils of Patuakhali Science and Technology University in Bangladesh

Abstract

Soil is a heterogeneous body and different soil have different fertilizer requirement for crop production depending on fertility status. This research work was conducted to evaluate the fertility status of the soils of the research field of Patuakhali Science and Technology University (PSTU). The soils of PSTU were collected and analyzed for the determination of following soil parameters viz. particle size distribution, texture, pH, organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, available sulphur and exchangeable potassium. The results showed that the particle size distribution of the collected soils varied significantly with each other. A remarkable variation was observed in textural classes of the soils. The textural classes of the soils were sandy loam, clay and clay loam. The soils were neutral to slightly alkaline in reaction and the pH ranged from 7.01 to 7.73. The organic matter content was very low and ranged from 0.50 to 0.96%. The soils were found to be deficient in total nitrogen with a range of 0.06 to 0.11%. The available phosphorus, available sulphur and exchangeable potassium content of collected soils ranged from 8.76 to 15.90 ppm, 1.04 to 3.06 ppm and 0.12 to 0.26 meq/100 g soil, respectively. The fertility status of the soils was very low to medium level due to very low organic matter content.