Centre of Excellence – Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute

Centre of Excellence in Sustaining Soil health

Centre of Excellence (COE) in sustaining Soil Health has been established during 2015-18 under NADP programme of Government of Tamil Nadu for testing soilsof farmers and offering high class analytical instrumentation and research servicesto researchersfor their project works focussed on soil health sustenance. Scientists and Scholars involved in basic and applied research addressing complicated issues related to soil health utilize the facilities of this centre. Sophisticated instrumentation facilities viz., GC-MS, LC-MS, MALDI-TOF, FT-IR, UV-Vis Spectrometers and other important lab equipments are installed in this Centre. Over all support is rendered in this centre for research works covering the soil quality maintenance by balancing fertilization, improving capacity of a soil to functionwithin ecosystem boundaries, sustaining biologicalproductivity and maintaining environmental quality. Ultimately this centre aims to promoteresearch that improves normal and salt affected soils to reach the ability to sustain crop productivity. Total cost of building and instrumentation infrastructure of this centre was Rs. 470 Lakhs.

Besides analytical services this centre offers periodical training (2 day training) to Scientists/ scholars on analytical instrumentation techniques on following titles:

Chromatographic instrumentation techniques of HPLC and GC
Mass spectrometric instrumentation techniques of GC-MS, LC-MS and MALDI-TOF

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Major activities

Testing soil, plant, manure and irrigation water samples brought by farmers, entrepreneurs and researchers
Quantification of extractable organic molecules/ pesticide residues using LC-MS/MS techniques.
Quantification of volatile compounds in samples by performing GC-MS/MS analysis
Identification of diverse microbial communities by MALDI – TOF analyzer
Dissemination of technologies in sustaining soil health in saline/sodic soil
Offering training to researchers on analytical instrumentation techniques

Trainings / workshops conducted in COE-SSH

Under this Centre of Excellence in Sustaining Soil Health, workshop and trainings were organized. In which more than 275 participants were benefited.

S.No.	Title of the workshop / training	Date	Facilitator
1.	Food Safety and latest advancement in residue analysis and food authenticity	24.11.2017	M/S Thermo scientific
2.	Seminar cum Workshop on MALDI-Biotyper- MALDI-TOF based microbial identification system	11.05.2018	M/S Bruker
3.	Application training on LC-MS	21.06.2018	M/S Bruker
4.	Application training on LC-MS	13.11.2018 -15.11.2018	M/S Bruker
5.	Application training on LC-MS	17.04.19	M/S Bruker
6.	Application training on GC-MS	24.06.2019 – 27.06.2019	M/S Thermo Scientific
7.	Application training on MALDI-TOF based microbial identification system	23.11.2020	ADAC & RI, Trichy in collaboration with M/S T Bruker
8.	Application training on GCMS	05.12.2020	ADAC & RI, Trichy in collaboration with M/S Thermo scientific
9.	Mass spectrometric instrumentation techniques of GCMS –MS	17.02.2022	ADAC &RI, Trichy
10.	Hands on training on MALDI-TOF based microbial identification system	12.08.2022	ADAC & RI, Trichy in collaboration with M/S T Bruker
11.	Analytical Techniques for Analysis of Soil, Water, Plant, Manures and Fertilizers	06.02.2023-10.02.2023	ADAC &RI, Trichy

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Post Doctoral Research

One Post Doctoral Fellow research work has been completed on “Assessment of soil organic pools and produce quality under long term practice of organic and conventional farming” by effectively utilizing the high end instruments

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Analytical Services

Centre of Excellence in sustaining soil health regularly takes up analysis of soils, water and plant samples brought by the researchers, farmers and farm entrepreneurs through Venture Capital Scheme under this

Year	Name of the Product	Samples analyzed (No.)	Amount (Rs.)
2018-2019	Soil, Plant and Water analysis	179	90,325
2019-2020	Soil, Plant and Water analysis	158	4,60,231
2020-2021	Soil, Plant and Water analysis GC-MS and LCMS analysis	360	686420
2021-2022	Soil, Plant and Water analysis GC-MS, LCMS, FTIR analysis pressure plate analysis and training	403	676293
2022-2023	Soil, Plant and Water analysis GC-MS, LCMS, FTIR analysis and training	600	623764