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Soil carbon, micronutrients and microbiological dynamics under cash crop-based cropping systems in semi-arid National Capital Region of India
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  • Published: 08 January 2026

Soil carbon, micronutrients and microbiological dynamics under cash crop-based cropping systems in semi-arid National Capital Region of India

  • Preeti1 na1,
  • Sunita Sheoran1 na1,
  • Dhram Prakash1 na1,
  • Ankit1,2 na1,
  • Todarmal3,
  • Sonia Rani1,
  • Rameshwar Singh1,
  • Parmod Kumar Yadav1 &
  • …
  • Rajni Kant Sharma4 

Scientific Reports , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Abstract

Cropping systems and nutrient management practices potentially alter microbiological properties and nutrients bioavailability in soils. This study evaluated the footprints of prevalent cash crops-based cropping systems at farmers’ fields (> 10 years) on total carbon (TC), total inorganic carbon (TIC), soil organic carbon (SOC), micronutrients as well as biological activities. The soils faced rice–wheat (RW) cropping system exhibited significant accrual in SOC (29.16%) over pearl millet-wheat (PW). Higher dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content was obtained in soils from sugarcane-sugarcane (SS) mono-cropping with a magnitude of 4.75, 9.01, 11.71 and 45.35% with respect to PW, RW, cotton-wheat (CW) and pearl millet-mustard (PM), respectively. Accretion of TIC (4.92 g kg−1) and TC (11.26 g kg−1) contents were acquired in soils experienced PM and SS cropping systems, respectively. DTPA-extractable micronutrients except copper (Cu) were found in higher concentration under RW compared to other cropping systems. In soils of RW cropping system, SOC, microbial biomass carbon (MBC), dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and DTPA-extractable Zn, Mn and Fe were higher by 3.33 to 58.97, 1.94 to 27.40, 23.81 to 51.59, 12.12 to 85.00, 25.73 to 58.05 and 15.17 to 83.44%, over other persisted systems. Despite the lesser chemical fertilization and manure addition, soils faced SS mono-cropping statistically reflected similar values to RW cropping system for most of studied properties. Two main canonical discriminant functions (CDFs), based on SOC, DOC, TIC, TC, DTPA-extractable micronutrients (Mn, Zn, Fe, and Cu), MBC and DHA, clearly differentiated the cropping systems and both CDFs explained 92.3% variance of the total variation. Principal component analysis (PCA) picked out MBC, SOC, pH and EC as most influential variables in evaluating soil status across various cropping systems. Additionally, two principal components (PCs) explained 73.7% of total variance in original dataset, underscored the major factors influencing soil properties under varied cropping techniques. Among the studied cropping systems, RW was found superior in relation to the soil microbial activity and nutrient availability. However, SS mono-cropping also exhibited comparable results to RW and proved better over other aerobic cropping systems, especially in terms of carbon dynamics and microbiological properties of soils.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely acknowledge Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India (29.1427° N, 75.7040° E), for providing the financial and necessary resources. For providing help in generating maps, the authors would like to thank Dr. Sanjay Kumar (Ex. Head), Department of Soil and Water Engineering, COAE&T, CCSHAU, Hisar, India.

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Author notes

  1. Preeti, Sunita Sheoran, Dhram Prakash and Ankit contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, 125004, India

    Preeti, Sunita Sheoran, Dhram Prakash,  Ankit, Sonia Rani, Rameshwar Singh & Parmod Kumar Yadav

  2. Division of Soil and Crop Management, ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal, Haryana, 132001, India

    Ankit

  3. Department of Agronomy, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, 125004, India

    Todarmal

  4. Department of Chemistry, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, 125004, India

    Rajni Kant Sharma

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Contributions

Preeti, Dhram Prakash, Sunita Sheoran, Todarmal, Rajni Kant Sharma—Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources, data curation, project administration, formal analysis, writing-original draft preparation, Preeti, Dhram Prakash, Sunita Sheoran, Ankit, Todarmal, Sonia Rani, Rameshwar Singh and Parmod Kumar Yadav—software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing-review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Preeti, Sheoran, S., Prakash, D. et al. Soil carbon, micronutrients and microbiological dynamics under cash crop-based cropping systems in semi-arid National Capital Region of India. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35142-z

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  • Received: 26 August 2025

  • Accepted: 02 January 2026

  • Published: 08 January 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35142-z

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Keywords

  • Cropping system
  • Soil carbon fraction
  • Biological activity
  • Micronutrient
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