Question.
How do you know whether a particular type of soil is fertile or not? Differentiate between naturally determined fertility and culturally induced fertility.
(Chapter 6 Soils, Class 11 NCERT geography "India Physical Environment")
Answer.
We can identify soil fertility by nutritional status, soil particle size, soil moisture, and soil depth. Well-developed soil profile (three layers) indicates soil fertility. A mixture of fine particles, sand, clay, silt, wind, moisture, and microorganisms makes the soil fertile. Moist and fine soil particles with red and black color indicate soil fertility. Dry and coarse sand particles of soil indicate infertile soils.
Fertile soil contains all the basic nutrients of the soil like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, etc. Fertile soil helps in the growth of crops. Infertile soils do not support vegetative growth well.
Following are the differences between naturally determining fertility and culturally induced fertility:
The presence of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potash naturally in the soil is said to naturally determine fertility whereas fertility that is not found naturally but is added to the soil by humans through fertilizers and manure is called culturally induced fertility.
It is cheaper to cultivate in naturally determining fertility, while it is costly to cultivate in culturally induced fertility.
Both natural vegetation and human-induced vegetation such as crop and plantation vegetation grow in soils with naturally determining fertility, whereas natural vegetation is not more suitable for culturally induced fertility.
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