The red soils occupy a vast area of about 3.5 lakh sq km which is about 10.

6 per cent of the

total geographical area of the country. These soils are spread on almost the whole of Tamil
Nadu, parts of Karnataka, south-east of Maharashtra, eastern parts of Andhra Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Chota Nagpur in Jharkhand.
In the north the red soil area extends in large parts of south Bihar; the Birbhum and Bankura
districts of West Bengal; Mirzapur, Jhansi, Banda and Hamirpur districts of Uttar Pradesh;
Aravallis and the eastern half of Rajasthan, parts of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram,
Tripura and Meghalaya.
By and large, the red soils are poor in lime, magnesia, phosphates, nitrogen and humus, but
are fairly rich in potash. In their chemical composition they are mainly siliceous and
aluminous; with free quartz as sand the alkali content is fair, some parts being quite rich in
potassium.
The texture of these soils varies from sand to clay, the majority being loams. On the uplands,
the red soils are thin, poor and gravelly, sandy or stoney and porous, but in the lower areas
they are rich, deep dark and fertile.
The red soils respond well to the proper use of fertilizers and irrigation and give excellent
yields of cotton, wheat, rice, pulses, millets, tobacco, oil seeds, potatoes and fruits.

4. Laterite and Lateritic Soils:

The word laterite (from Latin letter meaning brick) was first applied by Buchanan in 1810
to a clayey rock, hardening on exposure, observed in Malabar. But many authors agree with
Fermors restriction of this term to soils formed as to 90-100 per cent of iron, aluminium,
titanium and manganese oxides.