Abstract
The agricultural production in Punjab has increased manifold that aggravated the deficiencies of micronutrients in soils and plants. The availability of soil micronutrients in different soil orders depends upon the soil mineralogy, topography, climatic conditions and cropping sequences. Hence, to study the pedospheric variations of DTPA-extractable micronutrients, viz., zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn) and copper (Cu), in three prominent soil orders of Punjab, a total of 144 depth-wise soil samples were collected from four major land-use systems (cultivated, horticulture, forest and pasture lands). The DTPA extractable micronutrients varied from 1.74-2.81, 1.83-2.82 and 1.81-2.80 for Zn; 5.3-6.8, 5.6-6.9, 4.3-6.3 for Fe; 5.1-7.8, 5.5-7.9, 5.4-7.5 for Mn; and 0.84-1.40, 0.93-1.68, 0.87-1.65 for Cu in soil orders Aridisol, Entisol and Inceptisol, respectively. The average content of DTPA-extractable micronutrients was highest under soil order Entisol followed by Inceptisol and Aridisol. The content of micronutrients showed a declining trend with increase in soil depth in all orders. Among different soil properties, the pH and EC showed significantly negative correlation, however, OC had non-significant correlation with DTPA-extractable micronutrients in soils. Therefore, it is concluded that parent material, land use systems and soil depth affected the distribution of DTPA extractable micronutrients in different soil orders.