Brief history and current state of soil science in the Philippines
First published June 2009. Revised November 2016. Philippine soil science owes its early development to the Americans. The first soil survey was conducted by C. W. Dorsey an American soil surveyor in 1903. In 1921 a Division of Soil and Fertilizer was created under the Bureau of Science which in 1934 was renamed as Division of Soil Survey. In 1951, the Philippine Congress enacted Republic Act No. 622 organizing the Bureau of Soil Conservation with Dr. M. M. Alicante as its first director (BSWM, 2008). Teaching of soil science to students of agricultural science started as early as the 1920s at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA). R. L. Pendleton an American from California was one of the pioneer soil science instructors who taught from 1923 to 1935. Dr. Pendleton was also an outstanding researcher as reflected by the about 50 scientific papers he published (Pendleton, 1942; Carter, 1958). Until about the 1960s, much of the work of soil scientists in the Bur...