Vol. 8, Issue 10 (2019)

Author(s):
Rajat Kumar Parit, Kaberi Mahanta, Prem Kumar Bharteey and Shyamal Kishore Bordoloi

Abstract:
Conservation agriculture (CA) “A resource-saving agricultural crop production system that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment”. Conservation agriculture practices accelerate deposition of soil organic matter and augment associated biological properties of soil through enhanced inputs of organic carbon (Parihar et al., 2018). Also it minimizes soil erosion, conserves water within the root zone and improves soil fertility and productivity. Carbon is an important part of life on earth. It is found in all living organisms and is the major building block for life on earth and moves through the atmosphere, oceans, plant, soil and earth in short and long term cycles over a time. Carbon pools act as storage houses for large amount of carbon. Any movement of carbon between these carbon pools is called a flux. Soil plays a major role in maintaining balance between global carbon cycle through sequestration of atmospheric carbon as soil organic carbon. Soils store about three times as much carbon as the terrestrial vegetation (Lal, 2004). Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the epicenter of soil physical, chemical and biological health of the soil and is the major source of energy for the soil biota. Soil microbial activity refers any microbiological processes in soil like mineralization, biological nitrogen fixation, decomposition, nutrient cycling etc. Conservation agricultural practices increase microbial population and activity as well as microbial biomass in soil (Balota, 2003). Again residue incorporation in soil increases the source of carbon which favors better proliferation of soil microbes. Soil enzymes play key biochemical functions in the decomposition of organic matter, mineralization of nutrient and making nutrient available to the crop plants. They are process level indicators, which reflect past soil biological activity as influenced by various soil management.