This series of lessons includes lectures and activities to demonstrate judging the condition of soil for a given area of land, the qualities of that soil, and identifying management actions to correct the condition if needed.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Soil is essential for crop production, providing water, nutrients, and the growth matrix for plants. But agricultural space must compete with other human needs and natural resources. Although new agricultural management systems help meet the increasing food demands of the population continuous cropping systems and high-yield fertilizers can result in the proliferation of soil-borne plant pathogens. While bacteria and fungi have been thoroughly evaluated, a recent study focused on the contribution of protist communities, in particular those that consume microbes, on plant performance. Researchers tracked the entire microbiome of cucumber plants over six growing seasons with different fertilization regimes. They found that organic fertilization treatments resulted in the highest yield. Bio-organic fertilizers led to the most pronounced shifts in protist communities, with microbivorous cercozoan protists the most affected..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.