World Soil Day, 5 December is the United Nations special date dedicated to celebrating healthy soils for a healthy life. This year’s campaign, “Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity” calls on each and every one of us to focus on salt-affected soils.

Soil salinization and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystem and are recognized as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions. World Soil Day 2021 and its campaign “Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity” aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil salinization, increasing soil awareness and encouraging societies to improve soil health.

To commemorate the Observance virtual celebration of World Soil Day was organised by the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, M.S. Swaminathan School of Agriculture, Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM), Paralakhemundi, Odisha  on  5th   December,  2021  with  the  participation  of   Dr.  P.  K  Tarafder,  Ex.  Professor, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur (WB) as chief Guest and Dr. M. Devender Reddy and Dr. S. P Nanda, Dean (Admin), MSSSoA, CUTM as Special Guest.

Dr. Rahul Adhikary, Head of the Department started the programme by welcoming the Guests and participants. Inaugural speech was given by our special guest Dr. M. Devender Reddy explaining the background and importance of World Soil Day and current scenario of salinization in India.

Presentations

The keynote talk was delivered by Dr. P. K Tarafder on role of soil in crop production as well as environment protection. He also showed concern over soil degradation and challenges ahead to increase the food production for the growing population. Very interesting and intriguing presentation was given by Dr. Saurav Barman, Associate professor, Soil Science on Sustainable Agriculture through Organic farming and soil health management (Small and marginal farmers). He also presented how the CUTM intervention helped farmers’ community of Odisha state by providing different Training programmers’ on Agriculture Production and Allied Technologies over 75000 farmers and also plan to provide Soil Health Card and monitoring soil health continuously for sustainable and quality crop production.

Lastly Dr. S.P. Nanda paid attention towards some issues affecting soils including climate change, antimicrobial resistance, soil contamination, nutrition and human health and also suggested creating awareness among students and farmer community to stop soil degradation and protect it for our survival.

More than 45 participants attended the program and though the program was scheduled for one hour it lasted over two hours.

Programme Schedule

(05.12.2021, Sunday)