Soil Quality
Fact Sheets - Soil Texture - Measuring in the Lab
Particle size analysis (PSA) determines the relative amounts of sand, silt and clay in a soil. These size fractions are the mineral component of a soil and together determine soil texture. PSA is a laboratory alternative to field texturing (see Measuring Soil Texture in the Field fact sheet) and offers a more reliable determination of particle size distribution. There is only an approximate correlation between hand texturing and PSA (McDonald et al., 1998), because hand texturing relies on qualitative interpretation of texture while PSA measures exact amounts of individual particle sizes.
