Soil quality in rainfed lowland rice

by Stephan Haefele and Robert Hijmans

Maps

ainfed B lowland rice A agroecosystems are characterized by fields that are flooded for at least part of the growing season, but that are not irrigated. Asia has about 46 million hectares of rainfed lowland C D rice, constituting almost 30% of the global rice area. Rice production in these ecosystems often hampered by drought, submergence, and problem soilsis associated with low productivity, and with a Map 1. Soil quality in areas where rainfed lowland rice is grown in Asia. high incidence of poverty. We transformed the data of Recent technological advances, the Soil map of the world 3 by such as the development of stresscreating four soil quality groups.4 tolerant rice varieties and improved The first two groupsgood and crop-management options, can help poor soilsdo not have major boost yields substantially. However, soil chemical constraints but differ such benefits depend strongly in their degree of weathering (the on the quality and availability of physical and chemical breakdown of natural resources, particularly soil soil over time) and, therefore, their and water. Here, we present maps indigenous soil fertility (the amount that help characterize soil quality of nutrients the soil can supply). The and soil-related constraints in third groupvery poorrepresents rainfed lowland rice ecosystems highly weathered soils that are (excluding deepwater rice) in Asia.1,2 likely to have multiple soil chemical

constraints to crop growth (such as acidity, severe phosphorus deficiency, and iron and aluminum toxicities). The last groupproblem soils combines the most frequently cited soil problems, including acid-sulfate, peat, saline, and alkaline soils, which partly cause low fertility, and partly cause soil chemical toxicity. Although not widespread, problem soils are locally important, especially in northern India (sodic soils); in some coastal lowlands of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand,

Our approach is based on that of Garrity DP, Oldeman LR, Morris RA. 1986. Rainfed lowland rice ecosystems: characterization and distribution. In: Progress in rainfed lowland rice. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Baos, Philippines. p 3-23. 2 For more details, see Haefele SM, Hijmans RJ. 2007. Soil quality in rice-based rainfed lowlands of Asia: characterization and distribution. In: Aggarwal PK, Ladha JK, Singh RK, Devakumar C, Hardy B, editors. Science, technology, and trade for peace and prosperity. Proceedings of the 26th International Rice Research Conference, 9-12 October 2006, New Delhi, India. IRRI, ICAR, and NAAS. p 297-308. 3 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: The digital soil map of the world. An updated version is available from www.iiasa. ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html. 4 To do this, we simplified the Fertility Capability Soil Classification (FCC) system, which classifies soil types into agronomically relevant groups. See Sanchez PA, Palm CA, Buol SW. 2003. Fertility capability soil classification: a tool to help assess soil quality in the tropics. Geoderma 114:157-185.

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Map 2. Distribution of rainfed lowland rice soil quality area in Asia. Each dot is colored to represent the assumed dominant soil class.

and Vietnam (saline and acid-sulfate soils); and in coastal regions of Borneo, Sumatra, and New Guinea (acid-sulfate and organic soils) (Map 1A). Fertile soils without major constraints are relatively widespread in India, Bangladesh, western Myanmar, Java, Cambodia, northern China, and Korea (Map 1B). Poor soils without major constraints are frequent in eastern India, Sri Lanka, coastal lowlands of Borneo and Sumatra, and New Guinea (Map 1C). Very poor soils with considerable soil constraints are particularly common in the eastern parts of Myanmar, most of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra,

and Cambodia (Map 1D). In India, very poor soils are mostly limited to the west coast and to mountainous regions in the north and northeast. We overlaid the soil groups with the distribution of rainfed lowland rice area (Map 2).5,6,7 The results show that only about one-third of rainfed lowland rice is grown on relatively fertile soils, slightly less than one-third grows on soils with low indigenous soil fertility, and slightly more than one-third is produced on soils with considerable soil constraints often combined with very low soil fertility. Rainfed lowland rice in Southeast Asia is much more likely to be on poor soils with various

soil constraints compared with South and East Asia. About 7% of rainfed rice is grown on problem soils such as acid-sulfate or saline soils. Soil quality is a major constraint contributing to the low productivity of rainfed lowland rice ecosystems. However, spatial variation should not be ignored: farmers growing rainfed lowland rice in Southeast Asia are much more likely to encounter very poor soils with various soil constraints than farmers in South and East/Northeast Asia. Dr. Haefele, a soil scientist, and Dr. Hijmans, a geographer, work at IRRI.

See The where and how of rice on pages 19-21 of Rice Today Vol. 6, No. 3. This type of analysis is hampered by the spatial resolution of soil data. The digital soil map of the world was updated recently but it does not include detailed soil data that are available nationally, but even these data suffer from large variability within mapping units. In the future, this will probably be addressed by predictive spatial modeling of soil properties. 7 Soil characteristics can be strongly modified by local geomorpholgy and hydrology. Integration of soil characteristics with land properties such as slope and climate is a next step we want to take in the characterization of Asias rainfed lowland rice ecosystems.
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