Next generation tool for higher performing soils

Soil constraints affect 77% of Australian soils, costing producers over $1,900 million in lost production. There is considerable grower and national benefit from addressing soil constraints through amelioration and reengineering of soils in an economically appropriate way.

A Soil CRC project (4.3.007) led by Professor Keith Pembleton from the University of Southern Queensland is bringing together the Soil CRC’s soil constraint and amelioration modelling to create a new decision support tool for growers and their advisors.

Professor Pembleton said addressing soil constraints can sometimes be a very expensive action to take on-farm, often requiring a lot of up-front investment in ameliorants, time and energy.

“Having a tool to help guide on-farm soil amelioration and reengineering decisions will help alleviate some of the barriers to getting in there and improving the productivity of our soils,” he said.

The Soil CRC’s existing models and algorithms are being integrated with an easy-to-use interface. The effectiveness of the decision support tool will be tested through on-farm validation with Soil CRC grower group participants and retrospective analysis of past amelioration experiments.

“We are working closely with next and end users to co-design and validate this next generation tool, ensuring it is practical and useable,” Professor Pembleton said.

The project team has been working on the interface design and the conceptualisation of the scientific framework linking the components of previous projects together.

As part of the validation process, they have collated the historical field trial data provided by participating grower groups and implemented the field sites for the current season to provide new data for 2025.

“This is an exciting project for the Soil CRC that will bring together 10 years of research to create a decision support tool that will benefit Australian farmers and their advisors.”

Through targeted promotion and engagement activities both within the Soil CRC network and more broadly across the agricultural sector, the project seeks to facilitate widespread dissemination and long-term integration of the tool into Australian farming practice.