ASSESSMENT OF SOIL FERTILITY FOR WHEAT USING COMBINEDFUZZY AND AHP TECHNIQUES IN UDHAM SINGH NAGAR OFUTTARAKHAND, INDIASudheer Kumar, Prem Kumar Bharteey, Lata Vishnoi, Sumit Rai, Supriya Pandey,Bipul Deka, Marami Dutta6, Ashok Kumar, Sanjib Ranjan Borah, Ayush Bahuguna,Nidhi Luthra and Sudhir PalAbstract Assessing soil fertility is crucial for developing effective soil management strategies that can enhance soilhealth, increase crop productivity, and promote sustainable agricultural practices. The current study wasconducted to assess the soil fertility index and, to prepare a soil fertility zonation map using combine fuzzyand analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approaches in Udham Singh Nagar of Uttarakhand. Sixty GPSbasedsurface soil samples were collected (0-30 cm depth) from different locations, and analyzed chemicalproperties using a stratified multistage random sampling method and maps were prepared to identifytheir spatial distribution. The results show that the values of soil fertility index on the fuzzy scale (0-1) wasvaried from 0.04-0.62 and, therefore, the study area was classified as very low, low, and moderate soilfertility classes comprising 55.61%, 44.24% and 0.14%, respectively. AHP analysis revealed that the mostimportant limiting factor for wheat production was available nitrogen, followed by phosphorous, potassium,organic carbon, pH and electrical conductivity. A correlation coefficient between wheat yield and soil fertilityindex was found to be as high as 0.86, and its validating the zonation of soil fertility classes. This studyinfers that combined fuzzy-AHP techniques may be used to compute soil fertility index and limiting factorsof wheat production. |