Vol. 7, Issue 8, Part H (2025)

The present investigation in relation to "Comparative study of soil characteristics of healthy and declining Nagpur mandarin orchards in Morshi tehsil, Amravati district, was undertaken during 2024-25. Ten healthy and ten declining orchards were selected on the basis of their visual observations from seven locations of Morshi tehsil were selected to evaluate the soil characteristics of Nagpur mandarin orchards. Fourty soil samples were taken from 0-20 and 20-40 cm depth randomly selected over the field of Nagpur mandarin.
The results indicated that, the hydraulic conductivity ranges between 0.68 to 0.90 cm hr^-1 in healthy orchards and 0.57 to 0.81 cm hr^-1 in declining orchards. The bulk density and mean weight diameter in healthy orchards ranged 1.30 to 1.41 g cm^-³, 0.85 to 0.99 mm in declining orchards it varied from 1.34 to 1.44 g cm^-³,0.74 to 0.95 mm respectively soil reaction was slightly to moderately alkaline, with pH value varied from 7.41 to 8.02 in healthy orchards and in declining condition it is in the range of 7.55 to 8.03, EC ranges between healthy and declining orchards were 0.24 to 0.30 and 0.25 to 0.39 dS m^-1 resp. indicating the non-saline nature of these soils, organic carbon content in healthy and declining orchards soil are varied as 4.21 to 6.02 g kg^-1 and 4.11 to 5.12 g kg^-1 resp., free calcium carbonate in healthy and declining orchards varied from 4.37 to 6.21% and 6.21 to 9.99% resp. As all soils contained more than 5% CaCO3 they were categorized as calcareous soils. Organic carbon showed decreasing trend with soil depth and soils contained low in organic carbon. The available nitrogen was found to be low both healthy and declinings, phosphorus was medium in healthy orchards and low to medium in declining condition, potassium was high to very high and sulphur was low to moderate. The DTPA extractable micronutrients in soil varied from marginal to moderately high for zinc, iron, copper and manganese respectively.