Classification of Indian States and Union Territories based on their Soil Macronutrient and Organic Carbon Profiles

Soil fertility determines the successful development of a plant, and therefore it is important to achieve food security. Imbalanced and inadequate use of chemical fertilizers, irregular irrigation and harmful cultural practices deplete the soil profile nutrient profile, which is critical for the successful crop production. This study presents the results of the classification of the states across India based on their soil macronutrient profile. The entanglement coefficient of Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) and the neighbour-joining method was 0.81. Absolute correlation values were determined among the different classes of the soil nitrogen content and the corresponding classes of the soil phosphorus content. The K-mean clustering method divided the states and union territories into the three clusters. Overall, this works represents the grouping of Indian soils based on their soil macronutrient and organic carbon content.