Abstract

Reclamation of saline and alkali lands has of late assumed greater importance as considerable emphasis has come to be laid on augmenting food production by all possible means. In the Madras State, tangible work has been carried out on the reclamation of saline and alkali lands and the studies point to the necessity of applying gypsum and green manure or F.Y.M. to the alkali lands for reclaiming them at different dosages depending upon the soil type. No attempt has been made in the Madras State so far for accurately predicting the quantity of gypsum required for reclaiming a particular alkali soil; eventhough methods evolved by Schoonover (1952), Puri (1963) and Shawarbi and Abdel-Bar (1954) are in vogue for arriving at the gypsum requirement for reclaiming alkali soils. However uniform results are not obtained with these three methods, and hence their suitability or otherwise for different types of soil is to be assessed before advocating any one of the above three methods. In this paper, the utility of the above three methods for assessing the gypsum required for economically reclaiming the alkali soils of the Madras State is evaluated.

Keywords: