Survey of soil carbon and nutrient services in Australian apple orchards

The Australian apple and pear industry is the third largest horticultural industry in Australia. To quantify the sustainability of orchard management, a better understanding of soil carbon, nutrient availability and soil health in Australian apple orchards is required. In these duplex soils, ridging is a common practice in orchards, where topsoil is transferred from the alley and mounded in the tree row to increase rooting depth and maintain aeration. Thus, a soil sampling protocol was established that accounted for the spatially complex system of an orchard by sampling in the tree row, wheel tracks and the grassed alley, to determine if this practice leads to a stratified distribution of soil carbon stocks or health measurements. Our objective was to conduct a survey of Australian apple orchard soils to establish the soil’s carbon status and determine the relationships between soil carbon and soil health parameters.