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Potassium (K) is essential for plant growth and vital for soil health. However, despite high crop demand, K fertilization continues to be ignored or severely inadequate in Indian agriculture. Over time, this could lead to severe depletion of soil K reserve, irreversibly alter K-bearing minerals, and adversely affect soil fertility and crop productivity. Hence, we should comprehensively assess the alarming situation of soil K mining in India and come up with appropriate solutions. Keeping the above in mind, here we review the soil K pools concerning plant availability, their contents in major soil orders of India, reasons and status of soil K mining under major crops and cropping systems in India, and the impact of long-term K mining on soil K pools and clay minerals. We also address various aspects of sustainable K management in agriculture and suggest future action courses focusing on India. Our main findings are: (i) farmers in India mainly apply nitrogen and phosphorus, but little or no K; consequently, (ii) net K balance continues to be negative for most crops and cropping systems across India (e.g., - 3.29 million tonnes [Mt] in 2000–01, - 7.2 Mt in 2015–16); (iii) long-term K mining primarily depletes the exchangeable and non-exchangeable K pools in soil, and alters clay minerals to various extents; and (iv) the existing K fertilizer recommendations need an upward revision. We further enlist indigenous non-conventional alternatives of K fertilizers to meet the agricultural K demand. This is the first comprehensive review to simultaneously address the ongoing soil K mining in India, its impact, and its potential mitigation strategies. The points raised here would help reduce soil K mining, plan research work, and make policy decisions on K fertilization and residue management with the ultimate goal to prevent soil health deterioration and ensure sustainable crop production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atorvastatin is a lipid lowering agent with poor oral bioavailability (12%) because of poor solubility and extensive first pass hepatic metabolism. In order to overcome these issues, atorvastatin loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (ATOR-SLNs) were prepared by using glyceryl tripalmitate as lipid carrier, poloxamer 407 as surfactant and soya lecithin as emulsifier. The purpose of this work was to optimize the formulation with the application of response surface methodology to improve the physicochemical properties. The central composite rotatable design consisting of three factored factorial design with three levels was used for the optimization of the formulations. The optimized formulation was composed of drug/lipid ratio of 1:3.64, surfactant concentration of 1.5% with 5 min time for sonication. Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies confirmed the compatibility of drug and lipid in the formulation. The optimized ATOR- SLNs showed almost spherical shape with a mean particle size of 338.5 nm, zeta potential of -24.7mV, DL of 17.7% and EE of 81.06% respectively. The in vitro drug release study showed a burst release at the initial stage followed by the prolongation of drug release from lipid matrix. Stability study revealed that ATOR-SLNs were more stable at 4±2˚C when compared with storage at 25±2˚C/60±5% RH during the six months storage period. These results indicated that the developed ATOR-SLNs is a promising approach for increment of bioavailability by improving the physicochemical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]