A better understanding of Scotland’s soils is ‘vital’ for the future of Scotland’s farming, water and tourist industries, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment Richard Lochhead said today.

The comments came during the Secretary’s visit to the newly refurbished National Soil Archive of Scotland, housed at the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen. Whilst there he heard how the archive is allowing Institute scientists to monitor changes to the country’s soils.

Mr Lochhead said: “Soils play a major role in almost every aspect of our lives – from the long term sustainability of our habitats, agriculture and forestry, to protecting the flow and quality of the nation’s water. Even tourism, which is our biggest industry, ultimately depends on our soils being healthy.

“Given their importance, it is worrying to learn that we lose an area of prime agricultural land the size of Dunfermline every year under new building developments. “It is vital therefore that we understand the implications of such threats to soils and also how they will react to changes in climate and farming practices.”

The improvements to the National Soil Archive are to accommodate 1500 new samples which will be added over the next two years as a result of a new sampling programme covering the whole of Scotland.

Mr Lochhead said: “This facility houses one of the best resources of its type in Europe, and this new wave of sampling will allow Macaulay Institute scientists to measure the changes that have occurred in our soils over the last 25 years. Such information can then be used to make predictions and assist in safeguarding the nation’s soils for future generations.”

The archive currently houses 40,000 soil samples from right across Scotland, some of which date back to the 1940s, collected as part of previous surveys and long-term experiments. The cost of assembling such a collection today is conservatively estimated to be £10 million.

According to Dr Colin Campbell, Head of Soil Research at the Institute, the existence of the soil archive has also allowed recently developed scientific techniques to be applied to soils collected 40 or 50 years ago. “This gives us a snapshot of how the environment was before the production of many of today’s contaminants,” he said. “We aren’t just measuring change – rather we are measuring whether the changes have affected the ability of the soil to function.”

“The healthy functioning of soils is crucially dependent on the diversity of microorganisms which is vast and unexplored – for example a teaspoon of soil can have up to 10,000 different bacterial species. We can now measure this using advanced DNA fingerprinting methods. “Accordingly we are also building up a soil DNA archive for the scientists of tomorrow to tackle the challenges of the future.”

Such applications will benefit the agricultural, pharmaceutical and forensic industries.

Scottish soils:

• Contribute towards gross agriculture output £1.75 billion in 2005.
• Have produced world record yields of wheat and barley
• Contain about 50 times more carbon than all the vegetation in Britain and about 48 per cent of soil carbon within UK is in Scottish soils
• Are a key component of our nationally and internationally valued habitats, 26 per cent of Scotland is designated under SSSIs
• Regulate both the quality and quantity of our water

For further information contact Dr Dave Stevens Macaulay Institute d.stevens@macaulay.ac.uk