Soil Science Laboratory

Sustainable agriculture depends on maintaining an appropriate balance between the use and conservation of soil nutrients and water resources for crop and fodder production. The main goal is to continuously provide the most favourable physical, chemical and biological conditions for sustainable crop production. Our current knowledge as to how this might be achieved in many diverse agro-ecological conditions is inadequate. In this context nuclear based technologies provide valuable information on nutrient and water dynamics in soil and their effects on crop production.

Isotopic Analyses of samples from projects in Member States using Mass Spectrometer.

The Soil and Water Management and Crop Nutrition Section of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division and the Soil Science Unit of the FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory, IAEA Laboratory, Seibersdorf, assist in the development and transfer of nuclear techniques to Member States with the main objective of adopting these techniques for optimising soil, water and nutrient management practices in cropping systems, which support increased and sustainable crop production.

Nuclear techniques used in the field of Soil Fertility and Water Management complement conventional techniques, and provide unique information which other techniques cannot, e.g.

• Quantitative information on the flow and fate of fertiliser in soils and uptake of nutrients by plants to identify efficient fertiliser management practices
• Identification of sources of soil water and their availability to plants
• Identification of sources of soil carbon and estimation of the contribution of organic sources to crop nutrition
• Measurement of biological nitrogen fixation
• Measurement of soil erosion

The Soil Science Unit works with the Soil and Water Management and Crop Nutrition Section to implement the FAO/IAEA Soil Programme in Member States. The Soils Newsletter provides further information on the present and future programmes. The main roles of the Soil Science Unit are to: develop and validate nuclear methods (see Publications) for the use in Co-ordinated Research Programmes and Technical Co-operation Projects of the FAO/IAEA, train technical staff and scientists from Member States in the analyses of stable isotopes and the use of nuclear and related techniques, provide isotope analyses to projects where analytical facilities are not available, provide quality assurance [pdf] services to Member States.

Training Course Field Work in Seiberdorf.

The Unit produces an Annual Report which is available for downloading together with the biannual Newsletter on the Sub-Programme's present and future activities.
For further information please contact the Head, Soil Science Unit, Offical.mail@iaea.org