Not AvailableRainfed Inceptisol soils, despite their agricultural potential, pose serious problems,
including soil erosion, low fertility, nutrient imbalance, and low soil organic matter,
and ultimately lead to poor soil quality. To address these constraints, two long-term
experiments were initiated to study conservation agricultural practices, comprising
conventional and low tillage as well as conjunctive use of organic and inorganic
sources of nutrients in Inceptisol soils of Agra center of the All-India Coordinated
Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA). The first experiment included
tillage and nutrient-management practices, whereas the second studied only conjunctive nutrient-management practices. Both used pearl millet (Pennisetum americanum
(L.) Linn) as test crop. These experiments were adopted for soil quality assessment
studies at 4 and 8 years after their completion, respectively, at the Central Research
Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), Hyderabad, India. Soil quality assessment
was done by identifying the key indicators using principal component analysis (PCA),
linear scoring technique (LST), soil quality indices (SQI), and relative soil quality
indices (RSQI). Results revealed that most of the soil quality parameters were signifi-
cantly influenced by the management treatments in both the experiments. In experiment
1, soil quality indices varied from 0.86 to 1.08 across the treatments. Tillage as well
as the nutrient-management treatments played a significant role in influencing the SQI.
Among the tillage practices, low tillage with one interculture + weedicide application resulted in a greater soil quality index (0.98) followed by conventional tillage +
one interculture (0.94), which was at par with low tillage + one interculture (0.93).
Among the nutrient-management treatments, application of 100% organic sources ofNot Availabl
