UNDERSTAND AND VALUE THE SOIL ANALYSIS

1. During its cycle, the plant collects various elements from the soil.

2. In return, it returns some of the products of photosynthesis to the roots..

3. This exchange stimulates soil life and results in a change of parameters in the periphery of the rhizosphere. In return, soil-plant exchanges are modified.

4. This whole process also fluctuates according to climatic conditions: for example, photosynthesis is greatly stimulated in sunny periods.

5. In addition, excessive rainfall can also lead to the leaching of molecules such as nitrates.

6. The balance between export (harvest) and restitution of course influences the soil and its structure.

7. These different transformations modify the parameters of the soil, and the loop starts all over again.

Of course, many other phenomena can be added to this list. Therefore, it is essential to monitor the evolution of the soil in order to adapt practices over time and increase fertility of the soil. In this sense, soil analysis is one of the important monitoring tools. Several questions arise: How to properly prepare your sample to obtain a representative soil analysis? What informations are commonly available in this document? What are the different indicators of the soil analysis? What are their meaning? How to interpret their value to adapt the practices accordingly and support the fertility of the soil? How does soil analysis integrate with the measurement of the fertility of the soil? What are the complementary analyses and tests? These are all questions to which this training course provides an answer.