Volume 55 No 2 April 2007 - New Zealand Society of Soil Science

ook review
Australian Soil Fertility Manual (Third Edition). Editor: Graham Price.
Fertilizer Industry Federation of Australia and CSIRO Publishing, 2006.168pp.
ISBN: 0-643-09021-5.
Review by John Adams
Since the first edition of the Australian Soil Fertility Manual was published in 1999, it has been a
valuable guide, not just for the fertilizer industry but also for land-based primary producers of all types
in Australia together with consultants and tertiary-level teachers of Soil Science.
It is a real compendium of information, quite tightly packed into 168 pages of text and appendices. A
large number of people have contributed to this manual but, because of good editing by Graham Price,
the text has a very consistent style and is easy to read.
The third edition has been revised to reflect an increased emphasis on the environmental fate of
nutrients and appropriate management strategies. This is based on the quite comprehensive
information on soil physical, chemical and biological properties which forms the bulk of the chapter
contents. Several chapters have been revised and rewritten from the earlier editions.
New content covers liming practice and effectiveness, effects of fertilizers on food quality, long-term
fertilizer use, decision support software, budgeting for profitable nitrogen use and best management
practices for nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. There is also a new chapter on regulations for
handling and using fertilizers (in an Australian context).
The appendices are a valuable resource too, providing detailed information including nutrient
removals in a very wide range of crops and livestock, the composition of various fertilizers and soil
amendments, physical properties of major fertilizer products and a broad discussion of the Australian
soil orders. While this last appendix provides an approximate correlation between the Australian soil
orders and other soil classification systems, New Zealand is not one of the others.
The manual is an excellent source of information, and while some sections are obviously more
relevant to Australian users, much of it is of universal value. This is particularly so for the very good
basic information on the properties of soils and their interactions with water and added nutrients. It
provides a very sound guide for primary producers and their fertilizer advisers or other consultants. It
could also be a useful university text, although much of the basic content is broadly similar in
coverage and level to that in McLaren and Cameron’s Soil Science text, which covers a wider content
and is rather more relevant to New Zealand students. The Australian fertilizer industry is to be
congratulated for continuing to support publication of the manual which undoubtedly will be widely
used by many soil science practitioners.
abstracts
Comparison of the effectiveness of a nitrification inhibitor,
dicyandiamide (DCD), in reducing nitrous oxide emissions in four
different soils under different climatic and management conditions
H. J. Di*, K. C. Cameron & R. R. Sherlock
Centre for Soil and Environmental Quality, PO Box 84, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.
*Corresponding author: Fax: 0064 3 3253607; Email: dih@lincoln.ac.nz
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