The three favourite soil science books of:

Abdou A. Souad (Egypt)

Books are the main source to build up our knowledge. Each book, I have read, it put a new brick in my knowledge building. My undergraduate study (1974 – 1978) in Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University was in Arabic and some translated soil terminologies in Arabic language weren t clear. I used to go to the faculty library to clarify such terminologies from English books. I started to read English soil science books intensively during my graduate studies (MSc and PhD) in Ghent University 1982 1990. Although I read many books at the beginning of my career in soil science, the following three books were my starting point to realise and understand the complexity of soil system and to initiate some research ideas in soil science field.

Brady, N. C. 1974. The Nature and Properties of Soils (8th ed.). MacMillan Publishing Co. Inc. New York.

Tisdale, S. L. and Nelson, W. L. 1975. Soil Fertility and Fertilizers (3rd ed.). Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. New York.

Russell, E. W. 1973. Soil Conditions and plant growth (10th ed.). William Clowes & Sons, Limited London, Beccles and Clochester, U.K.

The first book in my choice was a first step to understand soil and its relation with environment. This book intensively covered all subjects of soil science including soil pollution, which helped me to select the subject of my MSc thesis Behaviour of Fe and Mn in soils under anaerobic conditions . The supervisor of my MSc thesis, Prof. O. Van Cleemput, encouraged me to read more books during writing the dissertation and manuscripts. They were also important books to me but I can t mention all due to the limitation of choice.

The second book Soil Fertility and Fertilizers was important text book for soil fertility and plant nutrition course in my MSc program. The book presents the fundamental principles of soil fertility and fertilizer manufacture and use in a manner suitable for student of agriculture. During my PhD program on dynamics of nitrogen in soil and potato growth characteristics, I thought from the third book how to present and interpret the experimental data of soil-plant relationships.