Comparative assessment of soil quality in drought-prone and irrigated areas and estimation of Soil Quality Index a novel approach

In this paper assessment of the impact of drought on soil fertility have been done by comparing two drought-prone tehsils Gevrai and Shirur Kasar (Beed district) with the comparatively resilient Tasgaon tehsil (Sangli district) in Maharashtra, India with 36 (duplicate) soil samples. Various soil physicochemicals parameters were analysed. A novel, yield-independent Soil Quality Index (SQI) was developed based on a deviation-scoring formula comparing each parameters actual value to an ideal standard reference. The SQI enabled quantitative classification of soil health into Very Good, Good, Moderate, and Poor categories. Results showed that Tasgaon soils exhibited higher fertility (Organic Carbon: 1.42%, Cation Exchange Capacity: 37.48 meq/100 g, Available Nitrogen: 182.46 ppm), while Shirur Kasar soils were highly degraded (Organic Carbon: 0.45%, Cation Exchange Capacity: 17.705 meq/100 g, Available Nitrogen: 130.12 ppm). However, Gevrai soils were moderately fertile. The SQI consistently ranked Tasgaon as ‘Very Good’ and Beed soils as ‘Moderate’ to ‘Poor’. We computed a Soil Quality Index (SQI) by converting each parameter to a 0–1 score based on its deviation from the ideal (more/less/optimum), then summing weighted scores to obtain a site-level SQI. These findings highlight the urgent need for localized soil conservation strategies and demonstrate the utility of an objective SQI framework for drought-prone regions.