Tomorrow December 5th is World Soil Day 2020. This year’s campaign “Keep soil alive, Protect soil diversity” focuses on raising awareness about the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the challenges in soil management, fighting soil biodiversity loss, increasing soil awareness, and encouraging  governments, organizations, communities and individuals to improve soil health.

Many developing countries have been suffering from low agricultural productivity for a long time despite being agricultural countries due to low soil fertility. In rural Africa, many farmers lack the resources and knowledge necessary for proper soil conservation management and fertilizer input. In collaboration with local partners, JIRCAS is pursuing various initiatives such as elucidating soil characteristics in the field, increasing rice yield under low fertility conditions through rapid analysis of soil fertility and the development of nutrient-use-efficient breeding lines, and implementation offertilizer development technology that utilizes local resources, with the aim of contributing to agricultural productivity, improvement of the standard of living of farmers, and food security.

Reference

FAO. World Soil Day. http://www.fao.org/world-soil-day/en/

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki (Research Strategy Office)