New test for biological soil health

A quick way to assess the biological health of soil has been developed using molecular techniques to measure earthworm activity, but this needs more work before it's ready for use on New Zealand farms. This article summarises the results of a Rural Professionals Fund project that aimed to develop a molecular test to measure the number of earthworms within the soil profile as an indicator of soil health. All text in this article is licensed for re-use under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). First published in New Ground magazine (Vol. 2), December 2022