Results and achievements of work package 3

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WP 1 | WP 2 | WP 3 | WP 4 | WP 5 | WP 6
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In the first project year Hohenheim University and Acacia Institute established the framework for a SOTER (Soil and Terrain Digital Database), which enables a land suitability assessment based on crop growth and spatial data like soil, groundwater and climate data. While Hohenheim University and Acacia Institute contributed to the scientific set up and testing and calibration of the model it was the joint effort of the other institutes especially CSSRI, PARC, BARI and OASE to collect and deliver the data in such a format that they can be used for the analysis. Since the summer of 2008 researchers from Pakistan were also directly involved in the scientific set up, calibration and use of the database. In 2009 scientists from Bangladesh and India were further involved in the analysis through the fellowship programme of junior scientists.

At the regional scale, a review on soil and water related information existing in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was started. Target data sets include soil maps at a scale 1:250.000 to 1:1.000.000 and the respective explanatory books describing the mapping units through representative soil profile descriptions and analytical data.


Figure demonstrating biomass potential of Acacia Nilotica in Indian soils affected by salinity.

In recent years CSSRI developed an overview of salinity affected soils covering most areas of India. These maps were updated with hard copies of soil resource maps in scale 1:500.000. Data from the states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat (maps and booklets) have already been analysed by Hohenheim University.

More than 100 soil profiles data sets from India, 37 from Pakistan and 19 from Bangladesh profile were were analysed and incorporated in a database. FAOCLIM provided the basis of climate data on regional scale. Soil profiles of several case study areas were described in order to be able to calibrate the spatial soil and water information. Detailed studies were conducted by Hohenheim University on the spatial variability of soils on the local scale of case study areas. Thereby the applied analytical methods were reviewed and standardised. For 30 tree species occurring in the case study areas a crop growth parameter were collected from the literature and compared with the in the case study areas collected biomass data (see work package 2).

During the meeting in April 2010 in Delhi preliminary results of WP 3 were presented to the BIOSAFOR consortium and a wider audience including the Indian Ministry of Agriculture and the European Union, Delegation to India.