A Vitual Tour of the Soil Testing Laboratory in the new ALFA Agricultural Services Building

A very generous gift from Alabama Farmers Federation allowed construction of the new ALFA Agricultural Services Building. Soil Testing and related services along with the Extension Plant Diagnostic Laboratory and Nematode Assay Laboratory moved into this new facility in 2004.

The ALFA Building is located on South Donohue Drive in Auburn next to the Seed Technology Center.

The facility contains a spacious lobby to welcome visitors, a comfortable conference room, and a distance diagnosis computer teaching room.

Large numbers of soil samples may be dropped off in the rear of the building.

Samples are opened and processing begins.

Separate rooms such as this are available for drying and grinding (1) soil samples, (2) plant and forage samples, and (3) manure samples to prevent contamination and for safety.

Soil pH and buffer pH can be run and recorded by this new robotic instrument.

Most wet chemistry and sample extraction occurs in this part of the laboratory.

Ms. Castro measures research soil extracts for ammonium and nitrate analysis.

Forage samples are digested with acid under a safety hood.

Ms. Hirut prepares plant samples for total N analysis.

Ms. Morgan runs K, Ca and Mg on the atomic absorption (AA) spectrophotometer.

All mineral analysis on digested plant and forage samples are determined by inductively coupled argon plasma spectrophotometry (ICAP). With two new instruments in the laboratory, all soil extracts will soon be run by ICAP. These instruments can determine cations, phosphorus, and micronutrients in less time that it use to take to just run K on the AA.

Working laboratories are separated from the offices and data processing by a hallway.

Homeowners and farmers can now print their soil test reports in graphic form using the Internet.