Home > Academics > Academic Units > Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (FoE&A) > Agricultural and Food Engineering > Bhabani Sankar Das
Professor
Agricultural and Food Engineering
We focus on improving water and nutrient efficiency in soils using intensive measurement and modeling. Specifically, we work on water and solute transport; use of visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared spectroscopy for rapid assessment of soil, crop and water quality; hyperspectral remote sensing, digital soil mapping, and environmental pollution and contaminant hydrology.
Over the years, we have produced some interesting results:
A. We have created national-scale digital soil maps for key soil properties (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706120309861) at 500 m resolution using digital soil mapping
B. We have also shown that the VNIR technology may also be used for assessing soil water potential (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017WR021494). The spectral data for rice canopies under water stress may be obtained from the dryad website (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2fq726m)
C. Flow and transport experiments have helped us establish that the polymer coating may be a smart option for improving use effiencincy of nitrogen in rice fields. But one must have a control over water use; otherwise, the use of such smart fertilizers only would be more expensive than conventional fertilizers.
D. We have shown that soil hydrauic properties and aggregate size distributions may be used to upscale soil response.
E. Our experimental and modeling work have shown that water stress at vegetative growth stages may be controlled to create yield advantage (Dasgupta et al., 2015)
F. We have developed spectral algorithms to rapidly assess several soil properties such as water holding capacity, aggregate size distribution, weathering indices, Atterberg limits, and nutrient contents.
G. We conducted a series of flow and transport studies in rice fields over a decade to show that preferential flow of water is a major menace in ponded rice fields. We have shown that plugging such flow paths can reduce water use to almost at the levels of consumptive use.
Soil Health and its Relationship with Food Security and Human Health to Meet the Sustainable Development Goals in India by Das B. S., Wani S. P., Benbi D. K., Muddu S. , Bhattacharyya T. , Mandal B. , Santra P. , Chakraborty D. , Bhattacharyya R. , Basak N. , Reddy N. N. Soil Security p.1000- (2022)
National-scale maps for soil aggregate size distribution parameters using pedotransfer functions and digital soil mapping data products by Purushothaman N. K., Reddy N. N., Das B. S. Geoderma 424 116006- (2022)
Assessment of Soil Properties using Spectral Signatures of Bulk Soils and Their Aggregate Size Fractions by Vasava H. B., Das B. S. Geoderma 417 - (2022)
Legacy data-based national-scale digital mapping of key soil properties in India by Reddy N.N., Chakraborty P., Roy S., Singh K., Minasny B., McBratney A.B., Biswas A., Das B.S. Geoderma 381 114684- (2021)
Spatial structure, parameter nonlinearity, and intelligent algorithms in constructing pedotransfer functions from large-scale soil legacy data by Chakraborty P., Das B.S., Vasava H.B., Panigrahi N., Santra P. Scientific Reports 10 1-13 (2020)
Assessment of soil texture from spectral reflectance data of bulk soil samples and their dry-sieved aggregate size fractions by Vasava H.B., Gupta A., Arora R., Das B.S. Geoderma 337 914-926 (2019)
Canopy Spectral Reflectance as a Predictor of Soil Water Potential in Rice by Panigrahi N., Das B. S. Water Resources Research 54 1-17 (2018)
Local modeling approaches for estimating soil properties in selected indian soils using diffuse reflectance data over visible to near-infrared region by Gupta A., Vasava H. B., Das B. S., Choubey A. Geoderma 325 59-71 (2018)
Soil carbon 4 per mille by Minasny B., Malone B. P., Mcbratney A. B., Angers D. A., Arrouays D. , Chambers A. , Chaplot V. , Chen Z. , Cheng K. , Das B. S., Field D. J., Gimona A. , Hedley C. B., Hong S. Y., Mandal . , Marchant B. P., Martin M. , Mcconkey B. G., Mulder V. L. Geoderma 292 59-86 (2017)
Estimation of weathering indices using spectral reflectance over visible to mid-infrared region. by Mohanty B., Gupta A. , Das B. S. Geoderma. 266 111-119 (2016)
Assessment of Soil Strength and Associated Soil Parameters for Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh using Digital Soil Mapping and Multispectral Remote Sensing Approaches Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment (DGRE)
AI for Agriculture and Food Sustainability Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
Soil Testing and Spectral Analysis The University of Sydney
Soil Assessment using Digital Soil Mapping and Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy in the Bundelkhand Region of Central India ICRISAT
Sourav Roy
Area of Research: Hyperspectral remote sensing
Joynath Mishra
Area of Research: Coal Identification and Hyperspecrtal Image Processing
Nafisa Begum
Area of Research: Hydrocarbon Micro-Seepage and Hyperspectral Study
Nukala Nagarjuna Reddy
Area of Research: Soil moisture prediction
Ojha Suchitra Rani
Area of Research: Hyperspectral remote sensing
Israr Majeed
Area of Research: Soil hydrology
Smita Rani Swain
Area of Research: Remote sensing for soil assessment
Sarimalla Naveena
Area of Research: Soil Assessment
Naveen Kumar P
Area of Research: Soil hydrology