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...

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.