Red soil

Red soil is a group of soil that develop in a warm, temperate, moist climate under deciduous or mixed forests and that have thin organic and organic-mineral layers overlying a yellowish-brown leached layer resting on an illuvial (see illuviation) red layer. Red soils generally derived from crystaline rock. They are usually poor growing soils, low in nutrients and humus and difficult to cultivate because of its low water holding capacity. Red soils denote the second largest soil group of India covering an area of about 6.1 lakhs sq. km (18.6% of India's area) over the Peninsula from Tamil Nadu in the south to Bundelkhand in the north and Rajmahal hills in the east to Kachchh in the west. They surround the black soils on their south, east and north.