Available Water Capacity of Selected Soils of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

The present study was carried out to estimate the available water capacity of 130 soil samples collected from different districts of Tamil Nadu. The samples were analysed for field capacity at 1/3 bar pressure and permanent wilting point at 15 bar pressure in Pressure Membrane Apparatus besides, organic carbon and texture (particle size). The moisture retention at field capacity ranged from 6.8 % to 57.9 % and at permanent wilting point the moisture content ranged from 2.4 % to 38.0 %. The available water capacity (moisture retained between 1/3 bar and 15 bar pressure) varied from 1.2 % to 22.6 % with a mean value of 13.5 %. The soil parameters viz., organic carbon, clay, silt and sand significantly influenced the field capacity of soils with a r 2 value of 0.7386. Similar effect was recorded for permanent wilting point (r2 =0.7258). Also regression equations were derived for calculating field capacity, wilting point and available water capacity from the value of organic carbon and textural constituents.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.100196

Pages

789 - 793

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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