Soil constraints affect 77% of Australian soils, costing farmers over $1900 million in lost production. Addressing soil constraints through amelioration and re-engineering of soils can deliver considerable benefits to growers and the agriculture industry more broadly.

Researchers at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) are leading a Soil CRC project to develop an innovative decision support tool to help farmers manage soil constraints. Known as DynaSoil, the tool brings together data, knowledge and models from previous Soil CRC research into a user-friendly interface, which delivers a preliminary assessment of the agronomic and financial benefits of soil amelioration.

Project leader Professor Keith Pembleton from UniSQ said the DynaSoil tool is designed to assist Australian farmers and their advisers to make informed, evidence-based decisions about soil amelioration practices.

“DynaSoil is the culmination of nearly a decade of Soil CRC research into constraint and amelioration modelling. Its scientific core pairs a machine-learning model predicting chemical constraints with an inverse-modelling framework that estimates plant-available water capacity directly from a grower’s own multi-year yield, climate and soil records,” Prof Pembleton said.

“The tool iteratively adjusts the crop lower limit in APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) until simulated and observed yields converge, removing the need for direct field measurement.”

While technically robust, DynaSoil has also been developed to be functional and user-friendly for both facilitators and end users.

Dr Uwe Grewer (UniSQ) is working with Prof Pembleton on the development of the decision support tool. “We have used a collaborative, co-design approach, involving agronomists, extension professionals, farmers and land managers to shape the design of the tool, ensuring it meets real-world needs,” he said.

Project update

The DynaSoil user interface was presented to the project’s participating grower groups, whose feedback led to a range of user interface enhancements.

“The grower groups also submitted field observations from their soil amelioration trials, which we are using to evaluate DynaSoil’s calculations,” Dr Grewer said.

The project team are finalising the tool’s science scripts to improve soil chemical constraint and plant-available water capacity predictions, and enhance the representation of specific soil amendments and ameliorations.

Dr Grewer said the ultimate goal of the DynaSoil tool is to aid farmers in identifying the most likely chemical soil constraints and the estimated plant available water storage capacity of the soil.

“The tool aims to estimate both yield and financial benefits from implementing soil amelioration options,” he said.

The project team will continue to test, refine and validate the DynaSoil prototype as they move towards tool finalisation in early 2027.

Participating organisations

  • University of Southern Queensland
  • Federation University Australia
  • Charles Sturt University
  • Riverine Plains
  • West Midlands Group
  • Liebe Group
  • Mallee Sustainable Farming
  • Burdekin Productivity Services
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