Integrated solutions for accessing soil moisture

Many Australian agricultural soils contain multiple physical and chemical constraints that limit effective root growth which limits water and nutrient use by crops. As a result, yields are significantly less, resulting in major opportunity costs for growers.

The ability of roots to grow through soil unhindered by physical or chemical constraints is key to making full use of the available water resources.

Subsoil constraints are likely to have large effects on the how much water crops need. Quantifying how subsoil constraints affect a crop’s ability to use soil water is important for productivity and water-use efficiency, because yield is linked to transpiration.

This multi-state, field-based project will utilise recent advances in soil amelioration techniques to address multiple soil (especially subsoil) constraints. This will improve our understanding of the interactions of these strategies with how plants use soil water in different soil types and farming systems.

The project will establish four long-term (5+ years) experiments to assess how amelioration strategies will improve crop rooting depth, water use and productivity by re-engineering soils with multiple constraints.

Economic assessments of amelioration strategies will be developed to guide the adoption of better soil management strategies by farmers. By maintaining experiments for more than five years, the project will address the most challenging problems of managing hostile soils to deliver solutions that improve the profitability of crop production in Australia.