About the Project

Australia produces just under 300,000 tonnes of apples per year (AgriFutues, 2017), which in 2014-15, was valued at nearly $556 million, making it the highest value fruit industry in Australia (Hall, 2015; APAL, 2019). Apple are grown in all States of Australia except the Northern Territory, in which there are 20 different apple growing regions.

Tree crop industries are the only major Australian agricultural sector to not have access to a biophysical model for improving strategic and tactical on farm decisions. Biophysical models have been used by a number of agricultural industries for improving irrigation and fertilizer practices, maximising profitability, and minimising environmental harm from salinity and nitrate mobilisation to groundwater has been demonstrated in other industries (Keating and McCown, 2001). Over the last decade the SPASMO (Soil Plant Atmosphere System Model) model has been developed by Plant and Food Research in New Zealand. In order to use and test this model for the Australian apple industry soil data is needed. Unlike many crop-soil-climate models, SPASMO requires detailed soil physical characterisation of each soil layer including the soil water retention curve or van Genuchten parameters and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Green et al., 2003; Green et al., 2012; Green and Clothier, 2016).

In Australia, soil maps and associated soil profile data (including chemical and physical properties) are provided through either the national soil mapping database ASRIS or State based mapping services such as THE LIST in Tasmania and eSpade in N.S.W. (state based soil websites are provided in appendix 1). The ASRIS database divides maps according to scale into seven levels in which level 1 is at a division scale with a mapping window of 30 km which is suitable for broad geographic analysis, whilst level 7 has a mapping window of 10 meters which is suitable for precision agriculture and site development. The major apple growing regions are mapped at; 

Soil chemical and physical data are available via either the APSOIL database developed for APSIM modelling or ASRIS. Review of these databases identified that only a single site (630Yp) exists in an apple growing region. Furthermore whilst the ASRIS and the APSoil databases provide soil physical data, they do not include van Genuchten parameter or saturated hydraulic conductivity values required for the SPASMO model. Overall,there is insufficient soil data and levels of mapping to identify the major soil types on which apples are grown, insufficient data for use with the SPASMO model, and no data that reports on the condition or ‘health’ of apple producing soils. The exception to this scarcity of data is the Shepperton region, in which the two reports ‘Matching irrigation systems and enterprises to soil hydraulic characteristics’ (Mehta and Wang, 2004), and ‘Soil Hydraulic Properties of the Shepparton Irrigation Region’ (Mehta and Wang, 2005) provide detailed chemical and physical properties of A1 and upper B1 horizons of the six main soil types including 17 subgroups use for apple production in the Shepparton area.

Despite the economic importance of the Australian apple industry little is known about the types, characteristics and condition of Australia’s apple growing soils. This study has sought to: