MINERALOGY OF SOILS FROM DIFFERENT AGROECOLOGICAL REGIONS OF BANGLADESH: REGION 26-HIGH BARIND TRACT

Bangladesh has been divided into 30 Agroecological Regions (AEZs) and the applied agricultural research has currently been conducted on this basis. In context of the lack of enough information on mineralogy on the AEZ basis, an attempt has been taken to study mineralogy of important soils from all AEZs of Bangladesh in order to provide basic information for applied research. As a part of this attempt, the mineralogy of ten soils from seven important soil series of AEZ 26, High Barind Tract, has been reported in this paper. The soils were slightly acidic in nature, had moderate to high amounts of clay, and the texture was medium (silt loam) to heavy (silty clay). The 20-53μm fraction was found to dominate over other fractions in most soils. The 2-20μm fraction was composed mainly of quartz, followed by mica, plagioclase, K-feldspar and chlorite. Mica was the predominant mineral in the