Fundamental Soil and Plant Nutrition

Welcome to Soil Quality Courses

This is where it all begins!

Welcome to Fundamental Soil and Plant Nutrition, a course designed to build your understanding of the essential relationship between soil and plants. In this course, we’ll explore how soils form, their key properties, and the critical functions they perform in agriculture. You’ll learn what drives plant growth and how plants interact with soil systems to access water and nutrients.
While the content is tailored to Western Australian broadacre farming systems, the principles you’ll gain—understanding soil quality, processes, and functions—are universal and can be applied across diverse agricultural sectors and environments. By the end of this course, you’ll have a good foundation in soil and plant science and will:
  • Understand the diverse nature of soil and be able to describe how soil forms.
  • Differentiate between key soil chemical, physical and biological properties.
  • Appreciate how soil properties interact with climate factors and influence the resulting soil function.
  • Classify soil features to identify soil horizons and profiles using visual and tactile field indicators.
  • Identify the requirements and potential constraints for plant growth at different stages of development.
  • Use documentation to support proper procedures for collecting, preparing, and submitting samples for laboratory analysis.

This course is expected to take approximately six hours to complete.

Whether you’re a land manager, primary producer, researcher, advisor, student, farm worker or just interested in soil – and experienced or new to the industry – you will find the Soil Quality Courses informative, practical and empowering.
You can complete one or more courses depending on your interest. A course assessment will test your knowledge and enable you to continue on your learning journey. Learners with a more extensive background in soils are welcome to complete the assessment and progress to Understanding Soil and Plant Nutrition – but may find a refresher of the fundamentals useful in practice.

Acknowledgement of project and content partners

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