Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

To improve soil productivity and health of acidic soils, calcium amendments are often used to increase fertility and pH (liming materials), and non-liming amendments to increase fertility only. However, the actual system for soil diagnostic of acidity (DA), for the quality of amendments (QA), and that for the recommendation of amendments application (RA) is more and more criticized. Many key players (farmers, industrials, agronomists and policy makers) have, for a long time, asked for an adjustment of these three components: DA, QA, and RA. Our research project aims to build a new DAQARA system that guarantees a balance between the need for lime amendments adequate for the soil productivity protection, and the characteristics of the calcium amendments provided by the industry, so that various agricultural systems can benefit of that field application in an adequate and sustainable way. This system, DAQARA, will lead to improvements in the practices of lime amendment by taking into account material type, nature, composition, and spreading characteristics and specificities (adequate amount, choice of the right spreading application method, frequency and moment). This project is supported by three multinational corporations: Rio-Tinto, Graymont and Omya Canada who, because of their activities around the world and to their distribution network, will contribute by joining this project to increase the visibility of Canada know-how.