Evaluating soil functional resilience

Compaction and drought can affect soil fertility and health which in turn can lead to a decline in crop yield and profitability. There is a lack of practical protocols for measuring soil health indicators. In order to drive practice change, growers need access to simple, robust and affordable methods for measuring their soil health status.

This project will assess the resilience of soil against the environmental stresses of compaction and drought in agricultural ecosystems.

It aims to provide an improved process based understanding of relationships between compaction and drought stresses, soil ecosystem resilience and functionality and sustainable crop productivity and profitability. The knowledge generated will be critical for Soil CRC partners and farmer groups that work towards adoption of best management practices for re-engineering of stressed soils for higher crop productivity and farm profitability. In the longer term, the tests and protocols produced in this project will have broader application across Australian farmer group networks and agricultural industries.

There are three major research components developed in this project to provide an improved process based understanding of how soil systems function, change and adapt to compaction and drought stresses.

1. Identification of main indicators of soil functional resilience in grain and sugarcane cropping systems against compaction and drought stresses.
2. Improvement of soil functional resilience to compaction and drought stresses for re-engineering of higher performance soils.
3. Development of robust and affordable protocols for evaluation of soil resilience against compaction and drought stresses in grain and sugarcane cropping systems.