The negative effects of the current agricultural practices include erosion, acidification, loss of soil organic matter (dehumification), loss of soil structure, soil contamination by risky elements, reduction of biological diversity and land use for non-agricultural purposes. All these effects are a huge risk to the further development of soil quality from an agronomic point of view and its resilience to projected climate change. Organic matter has a crucial role in it. Relatively significant correlations with the quality or the health of soil parameters and the soil organic matter or some fraction of the soil organic matter have been found. In particular, Ctot, Cox, humic and fulvic acids, the C/N ratio, and glomalin. Our work was focused on glomalin, a glycoprotein produced by the hyphae and spores of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which we classify as Glomeromycota. Arbuscular mycorrhiza, and its molecular pathways, is not a well understood phenomenon. It appears that many proteins are involved in the arbuscular mycorrhiza from which glomalin is probably one of the most significant. This protein is also responsible for the unique chemical and physical properties of soils and has an ecological and economical relevance in this sense and it is a real product of the mycorrhiza. Glomalin is very resistant to destruction (recalcitrant) and difficult to dissolve in water. Its extraction requires specific conditions: high temperature (121°C) and a citrate buffer with a neutral or alkaline pH. Due to these properties, glomalin (or its fractions) are very stable compounds that protect the soil aggregate surface. In this review, the actual literature has been researched and the importance of glomalin is discussed.

In this study present frequency of several characteristic days as tropical, summer, arctic, frost and ice days and also length of heat waves was compared with modelled future occurrence of these climate extreme indices. Climate-diagrams were used for drought hazard assessment. The main objective of our research was to detect possible changes of frequency of the extreme events toward future. Data from four localities in the Czech Republic (Moravia) were chosen for the evaluation. Each locality represents different climatic, landscape and settlement conditions. Localities are represented by the closest grid points. Future trend was modelled for scenario data (scenario A1B) by regional model ALADIN-Climate/CZ in the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The results showed obvious rising tendency of tropical and summer days frequency on all localities, especially in lowland regions. Very strong decreasing trend seemed to be in occurrence of arctic days, which might be very scarce in the future. Frost days and ice days should also decrease. Increase in number of days in heat wave was considerable. Climate-diagrams showed possible rising drought hazard for all localities towards future periods.

Glomalin is a soil protein resembling heat shock protein (HSP) 60 and exerting high affinity to metals, causing retention of water in the environment and improving mechanical stability of soil. Currently, glomalin is determined in the soil or other samples by combination of autoclaving extraction and total protein determination typically by the Bradford method. In this paper, a piezoelectric biosensor was prepared to determine glomalin in a label-free measurement. The biosensor contained antibodies immobilized on quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), and the recognition layer was stabilized by iron oxide nanoparticles. The assay was tested on real soil samples and compared with the standard Bradford assay. Limit of detection of the assay was equal to 2.4 µg/g for a soil extract with a volume of 50 µl. The assay takes approximately half of an hour and was fully correlated to the Bradford assay. The biosensor had significant advantages than the other methods: it worked in a label-free mode and was fully applicable for practical samples.

Soil samples (n = 11) were collected in the chernozem areas of the Czech Republic (the Central Europe) from the topsoil and used as representative samples. All sampling areas have been used for agricultural purposes (arable soil) and they were selected as typical representatives of agricultural soil. These samples represented the soil with same genesis (to reduction differencies between soil types) but with different soil properties (physical and chemical). Complete chemical and physical analyses were made for confirmation of copper adsorption on solid phase: we analysed the particle size distribution, content of oxidizable carbon (Cox), the cation exchange capacity (CEC), supply of exchange calcium, magnesium, sodium, phosphorus and potassium, soil reaction and the total supply of Fe, Al, Mn, Ca, Mg, K, P and N. The strongest simple correlation between analysed soil properties and copper concentration had content of available magnesium (r = 0.44) and available phosphorus (r = −0.51). In the case of multiple correlations (i. e. collective influence of multiple soil properties) had the strongest influence combination of clay, soil reaction, total content of phosphorus, available magnesium and available phosphorus. The main influence of phosphorus and magnesium is evident. We suppose that copper and phosphorus enter into specific complex. Influence of these five soil properties can explain 92.7 % (r = 0.927) changes in the content of copper changes in the experiment.

The buffering capacity of the soil is a very important property of the soil, which determines the ability of the soil to resist external influences, especially changes in pH and thus create good living conditions for plants and microorganisms in the soil. The buffering capacity thus significantly contributes to maintaining the health and quality of the soil. Buffering capacity is an important indicator of soil quality, because it is related to the overall condition of the soil ecosystem and other soil properties. The goal of this paper is to determine the effect of applying different soil amendments on the soils, 10 years after application. We compared the effect of 6 different treatments in closed plots: Natural conditions (N = control); Bare soil (B); Straw mulching (S); Pine mulch (P); TerraCottem hydroabsorbent polymers (H); Prescribed burn (F); and Sewage sludge (M). Our results have shown that the application of different amedments leads to an effect on the plowing capacity of the soil. While in the case of the control variant (Natural conditions, N) the buffering capacity of the soil was measured at 144.93 ± 0.25, the addition of different amendments decreased the buffering capacity in the following order: Bare soil (B) 142.73±0.21 > TerraCotem hydroaborbent polymer (H) 142.23±.15 > Pine mulch (P) 140.40±0.30, Prescribed burn (F) 138.20±0.30, Sludge (S) 127.47±0.15. In the case of all variants, these are statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05). Thus, soil amendments have been shown to have a statistically significant effect on soil buffering capacity.