Chemical Composition of the Clay Fraction of Some Alkali and Adjoining Soils of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Clay colloids are the most important fraction responsible. for the base exchange phenomenon in soils. Donahue (1958) considers the cation exchange capacity to be the single index of fertility. Therefore, the more clayey the soil, the more is its cation exchange capacity and hence the chances of its being fertile are greater. Hocking (1948) reported that clay minerals present even in the coarser fractions of the soil also contribute to the cation exchange phenomenon. The individual contents of silica, alumina, iron oxide, potash and magnesia in the clay are indicative of the dominant clay minerals (Grim 1953). The ratio between silica, alumina and iron oxide has widely been used in assessing the nature of clay minerals and process of soil formation. In the present investigation, the clay samples fractionated from alkali and adjoining soil profile samples have been analysed for their chemical composition with a view to studying the depthwise distribution of clay minerals content in the profiles.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.A03731

Pages

180 - 185

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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