« Characterization and removal of pollutants in soak water resulting from parboiling of paddy. | Home | Environmentally friendly construction of buildings – an approach towards Eco Living »
Present status of the tsunami affected home gardens: A case study at Madiha in Matara District, Southern Sri Lanka
By Admin | July 11, 2009
Inundation of sea water caused severe damages to home gardens resulting poor crop performances. As it is felt that the affected agricultural lands need to be rehabilitated to restore the production capacity, the present status of the soil in Tsunami affected home gardens at Madiha, Southern Sri Lanka was assessed. Sampling was carried out in late 2007 to early 2008 from randomly selected thirty home gardens. Representative samples were also drawn from neighboring unaffected gardens with the same soil type to be used as the reference. Major nutrients (N, P, K) which directly influence the factors driving crop growth and yield along with organic matter (OM) contents were analyzed using standard methods. In addition, attention was paid on measuring other properties such as electrical conductivity, pH, soil texture and bulk density.
Higher pH (8.29) and EC (6.48 dS/m) values recorded from the affected soils (compared to 6.78 and1.2 dS/m for reference soils) could still have some negative impacts on crop productivity. However, the figures for organic matter content of affected (0.87 %) and non affected (1.06 %) soils revealed that considerable restoration has already taken place. The average N content of the affected soils was 0.21 % and the respective figures for P and K were 81.89 and 95.00 mg/kg of soil. The corresponding figures for the unaffected soils were 0.23 % (N) and 98.8 and 164 mg/kg of soil (P and K). The texture of soil is coming under loamy sand group according to the soil textural classification with the average bulk density of 1.4 g/cm3. Though, major remediation works are not needed, use of organic amendments, cultivate salt tolerant crop species/varieties etc. could be considered as the most appropriate measures that growers can adopt until successful rehabilitation is achieved.
Key words: Tsunami, Rehabilitation, Home gardens, Soil properties
K.K.I.U. Arunakumara1, N.D.N. Priyadarshani1, B.C. Walpola2 and S. Subasinghe1
1Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Kamburupitiya, Sri Lanka
2Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Kamburupitiya, Sri Lanka
Topics: symposium2008 | No Comments »