Soil Testing/Problem Solving Era- the First 25+ Years.

While the importance of soil fertility for crop production has been known for thousands of years, it wasn’t until the 20^th century that science made significant strides in understanding the discipline.  The Leo M. Walsh Soil Fertility Distinguished Lecture will be devoted to a review of the accomplishments of the past century in soil fertility.  This year’s lectureship will consists of a series of three presentations by scientists that have been a part of some of this history.  D.B. Mengel will focus the first paper on the evolution of testing procedures from simple indicator tests to high tech testing systems that can analyze hundreds of samples per day.  The second paper titled “The Fertilizer Era” will be presented by R.G. Hoeft.  This paper will review those papers that documented the deficiency of each nutrient in field studies and the resultant work that identified factors affecting efficiency of fertilizer use.  The third paper, “Environmental Era” presented by G.W. Randall will review research articles that document the science of nutrient contamination and those that identify solutions to the problems.