Background

The soils of the tropical savannas, an area of approximately 850 million hectares, are some of the oldest in the world. These soils have generally been degraded naturally over the past millions of years. Low fertility, low pH, low P availability, high P sorption capacity (fixation) and toxic levels of aluminum commonly characterize them. These naturally degraded infertile acid soils have been one of the principal factors limiting development and food production in many countries throughout the tropics, an area that contains 58 percent of the world's land area suitable for agriculture production as well as 73 percent of the world's population. There is also a vast area of low fertility non-acid soils in the tropics that are low in P due to natural or man made soil fertility degradation.

At the end of the last century, a small group of scientists recognized the need for increased multidisciplinary and inter-institutional interaction between plant and soil scientists to tackle the problems of crop production on soils where phosphorus stress is a major production constraint. This group organized a small international gathering in China in 2000, the First International Symposium on Phosphorus Dynamics in the Soil-Plant Continuum. In September of 2003, the University of Western Australia convened a large group of soil and plant scientists for the 2nd International Symposium at Perth, Australia.