A Soil Health Card tells a cultivator what his own plot actually holds — nitrogen, phosphorus, potash and pH — instead of what the average plot in the district holds. On muga and eri land that matters more than on most crops: som and soalu are perennial trees that stay on the same soil for decades, so a deficiency left uncorrected compounds year after year rather than being reset at the next sowing. The institute tests soil for seri-farmers in six North Eastern states from its own laboratory at Lahdoigarh.
States covered
Seri-farmers of the North Eastern states.
| State | Sericulture served |
|---|---|
| Arunachal Pradesh | Muga and eri |
| Assam | Muga and eri |
| Manipur | Oak tasar, muga and eri |
| Meghalaya | Muga and eri |
| Mizoram | Eri |
| Nagaland | Eri |
The laboratory
Testing is done in the institute's Soil Science & Agro-Chemistry Laboratory at Lahdoigarh.
| Equipment | What it is used for |
|---|---|
| Kel Plus nitrogen analyser assembly | Total and available nitrogen by Kjeldahl digestion and distillation |
| Water bath | Controlled-temperature digestion and extraction |
| Hot air oven | Drying samples to constant weight before analysis |
| Rotary shaker | Extracting available nutrients from soil suspensions |
| Centrifuge | Separating extract from soil residue |
| pH meter | Soil reaction — acidity, the governing constraint on most North East soils |
| Water distillation unit | Reagent-grade water for the analyses above |
| Electronic balance | Sample and reagent weighing |
Analyses performed: total nitrogen, available nitrogen, phosphorus and potash.
Documents
- Soil testing facilities available in the Soil Science & Agro-Chemistry Laboratory Equipment list and the analyses offered — not yet published on this site