An outlook on the state of soil health research

Looking to research databases (eg WoS), it is self-evident that (i) in the last 5 years there is an exponential increase of papers having a Soil Health (SH) focus («soil health» in the title),(ii) most of these papers are produced after USA and Asian countries while Europe is well behind (less than 1/3 of USA production),(iii) most of this scientific production is sustained by public authorities (eg USDA in USA). It is also well known that Soil health has become a key topic for policy due to the contribution of the EU Soil Mission. Thanks to this effort, in EU we have an important direction towards its definition since Soil Health needs to deliver a specific list of ecosystem services (after the Soil Thematic Strategy policy instrument).