Establishing Relationship between Saturated Paste Electrical Conductivity (ECe) and Soil:Water Electrical Conductivity (EC1:2) in Some Swell-Shrink Soils of Nagpur District, Maharashtra

Soil salinity is a major environmental hazard which adversely affects plant growth, crop production, soil and water quality and agricultural productivity.Soil salinity is determined by measuring electrical conductivity of soil water suspension. Though saturation paste ECe closely relates with plant growth and development but its measurement is laborious and time-consuming specifically in clayey soils when large number of samples are analyzed. Measurement of EC1:2 (1:2 Soil: water suspension) is very quick and economical. Therefore, a need is felt to develop a relationship between ECe and EC1:2so that the values of EC1:2 could easily be related to ECe. For this, anexperiment was conducted on four soil series representing swell-shrink soils. Soils were artificially salinized with solutions (salt) of 0.2, 0.5, 1 and 2% of chloride salts (NaCl, CaCl2, MgCl2 and their mixture) and replicated three times. The results indicate that a significant relationship (r=0.96) exists between ECe and soil EC1:2and soil ECe can be reliably predicted from EC1:2 in swell-shrink soils.