Many of the soil types found in Australia are deficient in some of the essential nutrients and the solution is not as simple as just adding fertiliser. A plant’s ability to take up nutrients, even when they are abundantly available, is strongly influenced by the availability of water, the presence of soil organic matter, soil...

A better understanding of soil microbiology is essential if agricultural production is to meet the needs of a growing world population.

Several degraded soil conditions are currently causing environmental and economic concern in Australia, including acidification, erosion, salinity, depletion, structural decline and compaction.

This paper seeks to provide a short and simple description of how carbon, water, nutrients, organic matter and microbes interact to underpin the health of soils.

Thus report looks at the practice by a number of farmers in the Great Southern agricultural region of Western Australia of inoculating seed with fungi spores in order to recover degraded soils.