2025 Canadian Soil Science Society Soil Judging Contest
Source: CSSS Newsletter August 2025
The Soils for Our Future conference wrapped up with the 2025 CSSS Soil Judging Contest, held on Friday July 25th. Soil judging is an event where students participate as teams to develop and refine their skills at describing and classifying soil profiles. The contest started with a demonstration soil pit near Culross, MB, where pedologists Megan Westphal (Manitoba Agriculture) and John Galbraith (Virginia Tech University) provided participants with hands-on instructions on how to describe soil properties and features and a walkthrough of the contest guidelines. Once the participants had had a chance to get into the practice pit, the bus moved south to the University of Manitoba’s Ian N. Morrison Research Farm in Carman, MB, for the official contest.
This year’s contest had four teams registered, with 13 participants from the Prairies to the Maritimes. The teams, affectionately named for soil orders in the Canadian System of Soil Classification (Brunisol, Chernozem, Podzol, and Vertisol) were challenged in many ways during the event. Four stations were designed to test their skills, including three soil pits (one called “Death Valley”, oh my!) and one station designed by Dr. David Lobb (University of Manitoba) to provide insight on how to understand topography and effectively measure topographic features critical to understanding soil spatial variability, such as slope gradients, using several different approaches. In addition to the challenges of describing soil pits and landscapes, the team battled through the hottest day of the conference with the thermostat rising to over 30 degrees.
At the end of a long day, participants loaded the bus to return to Winnipeg as they awaited the scores from the judges for all their hard work. Arriving at the Delta Hotel, the tension was palpable. Only 13 points separated the teams, with Team Podzol (Nelum Jayarathna, University of Manitoba; Jeanne Durivage, Laval University; Bhashitha Konara, Memorial University) edging out the competition to win the contest.
The organizing team for the soil judging event (Daniel Saurette, Megan Westphal, Alex Koiter, Richard Heck, and David Lobb) would like to acknowledge the contributions of numerous volunteers who braved the intense heat and sunshine to make this such a successful event. We would also like to thank John Galbraith for sharing his expertise in soil judging with the team and spending two full days in the field to prepare and deliver the event. Finally, we would like to thank the sponsors for this year’s soil judging event, the Manitoba Soil Science Society, University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Agvise Laboratories, Canadian Science Publishing, and the Canadian Society of Soil Science.
Planning for the 2026 Soil Judging Contest in Guelph, ON, is already underway!!
