5 Major Soil Types and Classification K. S. Anil Kumar, M. Lalitha, Shivanand, K. Sujatha, K. M. Nair, R. Hegde, S. K. Singh, and Bipin B. Mishra Abstract The chapter is an effort to understand soil types of India and further classifying them since time immemorial from the start of civilization itself. Derived from a wide range of rocks and minerals, a large variety of soils exist in the Indian subcontinent. Soil-forming factors like climate, vegetation and topography acting for varying periods on a range of geological formations and parent materials have given rise to different kinds of soil. The National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur, as a premier soil survey institute, has been consistently using benchmark soil series to understand the rationale of the soil taxonomy, keeping in view the soil genesis from different rock systems under various physiographic locations in tropical India. The NBSS & LUP has developed a database on soils with field and laboratory studies over the last 50 years. This has generated maps and soil information at different scales, showing area and distribution of various soil groups in different climatic zones or agro-ecological sub-regions. The 1:250,000 scale map shows a threshold soil variation index of 4–5 and 10–25 soil families per m ha for alluvial plains and black soil regions, respectively. Progress in basic and fundamental research in Indian soils has been reviewed in terms of soils and their formation related to various soil-forming processes. More than 50 years ago, the US soil taxonomy was adopted in India. However, India should have its own system of soil classification at least for the purpose of correlation with international and universal systems. Keywords Soil survey  Agro-climatic zone  Agro-ecological region  Soil types  Soil classification  Spectral library  Technology transfer 5.1 Introduction India represents a land of paradoxes due to the large variety of soils. The physiographic features varied from high mountains, glaciers and thick forests in the north to seas and oceans washing lengthy coasts in the south, variety of geo- logical formations, diversified temperature from extreme cold to equatorial hot, rainfall from barely a few centimetres (<10 cm) in the arid parts to per-humid with world’s max- imum rainfall of several hundred centimetres (1120 cm) per annum in some other parts and the topography of high plateaus, stumpy relic hills, shallow open valleys, rolling uplands, fertile plains, swampy low lands and dreadly barren deserts (Gajbhiye and Mandal 2000). Such varied natural setting has resulted in a great variety of soils compared to any other country of similar size in the world. The soils of India including the highly weathered soils under humid tropical environments are potentially productive in terms of food production as evidenced by the growing self-suf ficiency in food production and food stocks since the independence (Bhattacharyya et al. 2013). K. S. A. Kumar (&)  M. Lalitha  Shivanand  K. Sujatha  K. M. Nair  R. Hegde ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Hebbal, Bangalore 560024, India e-mail: anilsoils@yahoo.co.in S. K. Singh ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Amravati Road, University P.O, Nagpur 440033, India B. B. Mishra Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur 813210, India Pedology and Land Use Planning, School of Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences, Haramaya University, P O Box 138, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia International Union of Soil Sciences, Vienna, Austria © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 B. B. Mishra (ed.), The Soils of India, World Soils Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31082-0_5 81