Understanding Soil and Plant Nutrition

This course builds on concepts introduced in Fundamental Soil and Plant Nutrition.

Step through how to customise a sample plan for your purpose and your property, consider what different analyses can tell you, and determine how to choose the right ones. Read sample test reports and explore major nutrient cycles within soil – with a particular focus on their impact on nutrient supply for crop production. Build your knowledge of the benefits of on-farm trials with tips for designing, running, and assessing them yourself.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to use your practical understanding of soil and plant nutrition to:

• design a fit-for-purpose farm sample plan
• use benchmarks and indicators to assess soil characteristics and performance
• read and interpret soil and plant tissue test reports and use the information to inform management decisions
• apply basic statistics to understand variability, trends, and confidence in your data
• understand major nutrient cycles within soils (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium), the master variables influencing them and how they interact to influence plant growth
• design, run, and evaluate on-farm trials to test practices under your own conditions.