Studies on the Efficiency of Laccadive Phosphate Deposits as a Phosphatic Fertiliser in the Acid Soils of Kuttanad

Abstract

A detailed soil survey of the Laccadive Islands, a group of nineteen islands off the West Coast in the Arabian Sea, brought to light the presence of large deposits of phosphorus. These deposits have a high content of calcium carbonate and are low in organic matter. Phosphorus is present in the citric soluble form and in spite of the high content of calcium carbonate present in the deposits, reversion of phosphorus to insoluble forms does not take place. The absence of ammoniacal nitrogen must be due to the presence of calcium carbonate and the nitrate nitrogen, if any, must have been washed off. The origin of the phosphate deposits in the Laccadives is not definitely established. It is presumed that the accumulation of birds' guano through centuries must have enriched the soil with phosphorus and calcium. If the Laccadive phosphate could be used as a substitute to the ordinary phosphatic fertilisers, it will go a long way to ease the current fertiliser shortage threatening the country's agricultural production plans. Hence it was felt feasible to compare its efficiency as a 'fertiliser' with one of the commonly used chemical fertilisers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.A03712

Pages

527 - 530

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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