Soil Resource Management and Inputs Quality Control

What is Soil Resource Management and Inputs Quality Control?

Soil Resource Management and Inputs Quality Control is a laboratory and regulatory service of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Union Territory of Puducherry, run from the Office of the Additional Director of Agriculture (Land Use Planning and Quality Control) at the Agricultural Complex, Thattanchavady. Farmers of the Puducherry region can submit soil and water samples to the departmental testing laboratory free of cost for analysis and recommendation, receive soil health cards for their cultivable lands, and have seed, fertiliser and pesticide samples tested for quality, again free.

This scheme is different in kind from the rest of the Department's portfolio. It transfers no money. What it transfers is information, and the argument for it is straightforward: a farmer who does not know what is in the soil buys fertiliser by habit. Habit tends to mean heavy nitrogen and light everything else, which costs money, misses the deficiency that is actually limiting yield, and degrades the soil over successive seasons. A Rs 0 laboratory test that tells the farmer which nutrients the plot is short of does more for the balance sheet than most per-hectare subsidies.

The Department states three objectives for the scheme in its citizen's charter:

• To monitor soil fertility status effectively through intensive sampling, and build a reliable database of soil resources for interpreting the land's production potential.
• To maintain soil health for sustaining production potential, and generate fertiliser recommendations for individual crops to meet farmers' requirements from that database.
• To prevent further deterioration of soil productivity, fertility and sustainability.

What services does the scheme provide, and how fast?

Two distinct functions sit under one roof here, and it is worth separating them. The first is advisory: you bring soil or water, the laboratory tells you what is in it and what to apply. The second is regulatory: notified quality inspectors draw samples of seed, fertiliser and pesticide from the market, trained analysts test them, and the results go back to the quality control inspector who acts on them. The farmer-facing bridge between the two is the fourth row of that table, if you suspect an input you bought is substandard, you do not have to accept it. Submit a sample through your Agricultural Officer and have it tested.

Who is eligible to use the soil testing service?

You can apply if:

• You are a citizen of Puducherry.
• You are a farmer.
• You are cultivating in the Puducherry region, which is where the Department locates the service in its charter.

That is the whole test. There is no landholding threshold, no income ceiling, no social category restriction and no requirement to have taken any other departmental scheme first. Given how tightly most Puducherry agriculture schemes are gated on 1.5 acres of command area or a Farmers Identity Card, this openness is the scheme's most useful feature.

You are not eligible if:

• You are not a farmer, or are not cultivating land in Puducherry. The laboratory serves the Department's agricultural clientele, not general commercial testing.
• You are outside the Puducherry region and the service has not been extended to your region. Farmers in Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam should approach their regional agriculture office to confirm where samples from those regions are tested.
• You are seeking a certified analysis for a commercial or legal purpose unrelated to your own cultivation. The laboratory's outputs are advisory recommendations and soil health cards for farmers, and regulatory reports for the Department's own quality control inspectors.

What documents are required?

How to apply for soil and water testing

1. Ask your Agricultural Officer how to draw the sample. Collection method matters more than anything else in soil testing — a sample scraped off the surface of one corner of the field will produce a recommendation that fits no part of it. The Agricultural Officer at your Uzhavar Udhaviyagam will explain the sampling depth and the number of spots to composite.
2. Visit the office during working hours. Go to the Office of the Additional Director of Agriculture (Land Use Planning and Quality Control), Agricultural Complex, Thattanchavady, Puducherry 605 009, and request the prescribed application form from the Deputy Director of Agriculture (Chemistry).
3. Fill in every mandatory field, paste the passport-sized photograph and sign across it where the form asks, and attach self-attested copies of the supporting documents.
4. Submit the form together with the labelled sample to the Deputy Director of Agriculture (Chemistry).
5. Collect your acknowledgement. The office makes the entry in its application receipt register and assigns a unique number used for all further references, which also serves as the acknowledgement of receipt.
6. Collect the analysis and recommendation, for which the Department's published service standard is 5 days. The soil health card for your cultivable land follows within a month, issued through the Agricultural Officer at the Uzhavar Udhaviyagam.

How to get a suspect seed, fertiliser or pesticide tested

1. Keep the packaging, the bill and the unopened remainder of the input you suspect. Without the batch and the seller's bill, the result cannot be acted on against anyone.
2. Contact the Agricultural Officer (Uzhavar Udhaviyagam) concerned and tell them what you bought, from whom, and what went wrong.
3. Submit the sample through that officer for assessment of quality.
4. Wait for the result, which the laboratory sends to the respective quality control inspector within one month of receipt of the sample. Notified quality inspectors also draw their own market samples independently of farmer complaints.

How do I check the status of my sample?

Quote the unique number from the application receipt register when you follow up with the Deputy Director of Agriculture (Chemistry) at Thattanchavady. For soil health cards, the delivery point is your Agricultural Officer at the Uzhavar Udhaviyagam, not the laboratory, so a card that has not arrived within the month should be chased there first. For input quality testing, the result goes to the quality control inspector rather than directly to the complainant, so ask the Agricultural Officer who forwarded your sample.

Why samples get returned, and how to avoid it

• Sample drawn incorrectly: from a single spot, from the surface only, or from wet soil immediately after irrigation or fertiliser application. Follow the Agricultural Officer's sampling instructions before collecting.
• Sample not labelled with the survey number and plot, which makes the recommendation impossible to tie to a specific field.
• Insufficient quantity for the tests required, particularly where both soil and water analysis is wanted.
• No proof of being a farmer and a citizen of Puducherry, which are the two published eligibility conditions.
• Input complaint filed without the packaging or bill, which leaves the batch untraceable even if the analysis confirms the input was substandard.
• Expecting a cash benefit. This scheme pays nothing; readers looking for money should turn to the Department's Crop Production Technology and horticulture production incentive components instead.

Where to raise a grievance

The Department's published grievance officer for this wing is the Additional Director of Agriculture (Land Use Planning and Quality Control), Agricultural Complex, Thattanchavady, Puducherry 605 009, reachable on 0413-2241942. The Joint Director of Agriculture (Chemistry) can be contacted on 0413-2249262, and the Director of Agriculture on 0413-2336977 or at diragri[dot]py[at]gov[dot]in. The Additional Director (Land Use Planning and Quality Control) also publishes the email adalup[dot]pon[at]nic[dot]in.

Farmers in the other regions should approach the Additional Director of Agriculture, Karaikal, on 04368-230679, the Deputy Director of Agriculture, Mahe, on 0490-2334525, or the Deputy Director of Agriculture, Yanam, on 0884-2321922.

The Department's citizen's charter, grievance redress note and list of responsibility centres are all published on agri.py.gov.in. Every service under this scheme is free of cost, and no fee, tip or agent charge is authorised at any stage.