Developing a soil health assessment protocol for Saskatchewan producers

Project Description

This project focuses on developing a Saskatchewan or prairie-based soil health testing protocol available to producers.

Soil health testing has been identified as a research priority by many producers. Developing a Saskatchewan Soil Health Assessment Protocol (SSHAP) will provide producers with a decision management tool that will help them assess the soil health of their lands and subsequently improve health of their soils. In turn, this will likely have multiple economic benefits such as higher crop yields, improved crop yield stability, increased resiliency against droughts or severe weather events, and perhaps reduce water demand due to improvements in water holding capacity. Thus, if Saskatchewan producers are to remain on the leading-edge of Canadian agriculture, it is essential that the Province has its own soil health test””one that is specifically suited to the semi-arid climate and major soil zones in Saskatchewan. At present, there is no Saskatchewan or prairie-based soil health test available to producers.

The main objectives are to identify the soil properties that best characterize soil health in the semi-arid prairies; to quantify the effects of medium and long-term agricultural management (tillage system, crop rotation) on soil health; and to develop a new producer-oriented manual (soil health assessment protocol) for measuring soil health in Saskatchewan. The proposed project will fill this gap by developing Saskatchewan’s first soil health testing protocol.

Research Results

Farmers are looking for appropriate tools and methods for assessing and interpreting the health status of their soils; however, for Saskatchewan there is no standardized and prairie-based soil health test available. As such, this research focused on developing a soil health testing protocol for arable cropping systems in Saskatchewan by building off the Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health (CASH) framework developed in the USA. In Sept and Oct 2018, soil samples (0-15, 15-30, and 30-60 cm depths) were collected from 55 arable fields across Saskatchewan along with a couple native prairie samples. Various soil chemical, physical, and biological attributes were measured (23 attributes in total). Based on the data distribution for each attribute, we developed scoring functions. The results from multivariate analyses were used to determine the weighting factors needed to integrate the individual scores from each soil attribute into a single Saskatchewan Soil Health Score (SSHS). Soil C and N indices (soil organic C, active C, total N, and soil protein) produced the highest weighting factors. Any linkages between the soil health scores and crop productivity were tested as well by assessing the cereal yields for the past 10 years as reported from the same rural municipalities where the soil samples were collected. A positive relationship between soil health and yields was most apparent during dry years; thus, the team recommend further research to explore this linkage at a finer scale. Overall, this research forms the foundation of a promising tool for Saskatchewan producers who are interested in tracking soil health and using the results to inform management practices. To confirm the competitiveness in agronomic performance of our lines when compared to top wheat cultivars, the researchers will perform an extensive agronomic characterization under field conditions (project Field evaluation of next-generation solid-stemmed CWRS heat, ADF20210681, January 2022). These results will allow the selection of wheat lines with the potential to be released as new CWRS cultivars.