JSR

Soil health is vital to both food security and ecological stability and represents a key research frontier in soil science. However, the implications of soil health remain unclear and are often conflated with soil quality. In this study, plant growth performance was used as an indicator of soil health, assuming that better plant growth reflects healthier soil. We compared the growth rates of Dodonaea viscosa (L.) Jacq. in two different soil types—yellow-brown soil (Luvisols) with good soil quality (higher fertility), and dry red soil (Lixisols) with lower soil quality (lower fertility). Plants were grown in both untreated and treated soils, with treatments including nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), combined nitrogen-phosphorus (NP) addition, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation in pot experiments. Soil quality was evaluated using the soil quality index. Our results show that the addition of limiting nutrients (N or P) and AMF significantly enhanced plant growth in both soils. However, D. viscosa consistently showed poorer growth in the yellow-brown soil than in the dry-red soil. This suggests that the yellow-brown soil, despite its higher soil quality, had a lower overall health. These findings highlight the distinction between soil health and quality and indicate that higher fertility does not necessarily equate to better soil health. Moreover, soil health appears to be plant species-specific, because different plant species respond differently to various soil conditions. Thus, advancing soil health initiatives should prioritise the identification of plant species that are most compatible with the specific attributes of the soil.

soil health; soil health assessment; soil quality; soil fertility; soil microorganism