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NTU Student Wins First Place at 2014 Soil Judging Contest

From left to right: Yi-Ting Lee, Yi Lin, Yi-Jun Zheng, IUSS President Jae E. Yang, Professor Zueng-Sang Chen and Jian-Hui Hsu.
From left to right: Yi-Ting Lee, Yi Lin, Yi-Jun Zheng, IUSS President Jae E. Yang, Professor Zueng-Sang Chen and Jian-Hui Hsu.

Department of Agricultural Chemistry Ph.D. student Jian-Hui Hsu (許健輝) won the first place at the first International Soil Judging Competition held between June 5 and 7 in Jeju, Korea.

The competition was held as part of the International Union of Soil Science’s 20th World Congress of Soil Science which was hosted by the Korean Society of Soil Science and Fertilizer. Up to 13 teams of 60 individuals from countries across the five continents competed in the first ever international soil judging contest. The Taiwan team was formed by Hsu along with Department of Agricultural Chemistry graduate students Yi-Jun Zheng (鄭亦均), Yi-Ting Lee (李依庭) and Yi Lin (林宜) with DAC Professor Zueng-Sang Chen (陳尊賢) as coach.

During the first two days of the event, the teams had the opportunity to practice identifying eight types of soil profiles consisting of various soil layers (horizons). During this period, Professor Chen was able to teach the team how to quickly and accurately identify the soil layers, describe their features, and classify the soil according to their various usages and applications. Each team was then tested on their knowledge and scored according to team and individual performances.

In addition to taking home first place in the individual category, the NTU team was presented with an Award of Excellence.

Prior to the competition, members of the NTU team participated in a field application training session organized by Professor Chen. As the five-day training took place under cold and treacherous weathers in the mountains of Yangmingshan (陽明山), though challenging, all members all agreed that the hands-on experience was essential to the team’s ability to quickly adapt to Jeju’s environment for both the practice and competition sessions.

Chinese version