Agroforestry in Soil Health Management: Approaches and Potentials

In the arena of climate change, agriculture continues to struggle to meet the burgeoning food demand while sustainably managing the threats of soil erosion, land degradation and so on. The declaration of 2015 as ‘International year of soils’ by United Nations (UN) General Assembly has certainly emphasised the importance of soils in sustainable food systems. The need of the hour is to identify and promote land-based systems and practices that maintain and improve soil resources which are crucial to our well-being. Among the various land-use options today, we have agroforestry which focuses on the integration of trees in land-use systems particularly nitrogen fixing trees or multipurpose tree species in a view of increasing the organic matter content and improving fertility status of soil. This paper provides a brief review of research findings/studies on how agroforestry improves the physico-chemical and biological soil characters and helps to maintain soil fertility.