The assessment of soil quality at paddy fields in Merauke, Indonesia

Indonesia’s agricultural land has potentials to be expanded. To achieve a food security in Papua, Indonesia’s government has been promoting a program namely Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE). The objective of this study is to determine soil quality on several paddy fields in Merauke District, Papua. Soil samples were gathered from 9 old paddy fields and 1 new paddy field (as the control). This study used the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to determine the most appropriate indicator to form minimum data set (MDS). MDS was taken to calculate the Soil Quality Index (SQI). Some soil properties were used as indicators which were consist of soil pH, organic carbon (OC), bulk density (BD), particulate organic matter (POM), Available-N (Av-N) and it represented 89.3% of the variability of data. The results showed that all SQI in the study sites were lower than location 10/the control site (3.470), except for location 3 which has the same SQI level. In fact, land use changes from natural into paddy fields or other agriculture lands may degrade soil and land functions. Therefore, the action requires more efforts to maintain the soil function.