Soil organic carbon content and nutrient status in temperate agroforestry systems of Kashmir Himalaya

The study was carried out to assess the soil nutrient status in four prominent agroforestry systems viz., home gardens, horti-agriculture, boundary plantation and hortisilvi-pasture in temperate conditions of Kashmir Himalaya. Home garden was the most prominent system being adopted by farmers (98.43% of the total farmers surveyed). All the four agroforestry systems showed significantly higher values of available N, P, K and OC contents. However, home garden system had maximum nutrient (available N: 337.0, available P: 42.02 and available K: 289.38 kgha⁻¹) and soil organic carbon content (1.57%) due to multi-strata canopy systems. Thus all the studied tree based land use systems at temperate zones were found as sustainable because of efficient nutrient cycling and played an important role in carbon mitigation.