Soil Bureau

New Zealand Soil Bureau (1936-1992 ) was a division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research specializing in soil-related research and development.

[1] Established adjacent to Taita College on approximately 90 acres on the Eastern Hills of Lower Hutt north of Wellington,[2] the foyer featured a large mural by Ernest Mervyn Taylor depicting a cloaked figure using a kō (Māori digging stick).

The impetus for forming a separate unit related to soil science was work in the 1930s by Leslie Grange and Norman Taylor which showed a correspondence between soil type and bush sickness in cattle, which led to the discovery that ash-based soils in the central North Island were Cobalt deficient and that cobalt-enriched salt licks could open up tens of thousands of acres to dairy farming.

[4] Soil Bureau was renamed as DSIR Land Resources in 1990 and then reformed into Landcare Research in 1992 by the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992,[5] but the name remains protected under the Flags, Emblems, and Names Protection Act 1981.

[6] Many Soil Bureau publications were digitised by its successor organisation.