Abstract
Bangladesh has been divided into 30 Agroecological Regions (AEZs) and the applied agricultural research has currently been conducted on this basis. In context of the lack of enough information on mineralogy on the AEZ basis, an attempt has been taken to study on the mineralogy of important soils from all AEZs of Bangladesh in order to provide basic information for applied research. As a part of this attempt, the mineralogy of twelve soils from six representative soil series of AEZ 9, Old Brahmaputra Floodplain, has been reported in the present paper. The clay content of the surface soils ranged from 10 to 33%. Nine soils were medium-textured (7 loam and 2 silt loam), while two soils were sandy loam and the remaining one was clay loam. The 2-20 μm fraction was dominated by quartz, and then by mica and chlorite; plagioclase and K-feldspar were also identified. The <2 μm clay fraction was dominated by mica and chlorite with some vermiculite and/or vermiculite-chlorite intergrade. The impact of mineralogy on the inherent potentiality of soils regarding crop production has been discussed.
