ABOUT SOILMOISTURE Every day, universities, colleges, government agencies, commercial agriculture and industry around the world rely on Soilmoisture agronomic equipment. Over the years we have built a worldwide network of dealers to serve your local needs. From our location in Santa Barbara, California's beautiful central coast, we have reputation of service and quality instrumentation that spans over a half a century of innovation.

It all began over 50 years ago when our founder, P.E. Skaling, joined the staff of the U.S. Salinity Laboratory in Riverside, California. While there, he participated in soils/moisture research, and built the first Pressure Membrane Extractor and First Tensiometers (an instrument that is now accepted and used on a global basis).

The Pressure Membrane Extractor, and subsequent ceramic plate extractors, first commercially available from Soilmoisture, made it possible to characterize the moisture-holding capacities of soils. Our revolutionary tools radically transformed irrigation practices, allowing for the establishment of soil-moisture standards now used worldwide

Soilmoisture continues the tradition of being the first to develop new technologies. One such technology is Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR); a process that measures the dielectric constant of materials to derive moisture content. We began our work on this new technology in 1984, and since then we have developed the world's most complete TDR instrument system.

This company is rich in adding new and innovative instrumentation and techniques to research community..

1940's
Introduced:
Pressure Membrane and Pressure Plate Extractors and Tensiometers.

1950's
Introduced:
Soil Sampling Equipment: Bucket Augers, Viemeyer soil sampling tubes for deep sampling, etc.

High pressure air compressors and control manifolds for pressure extractors, with other accessories.

Volumetric Pressure Plate Extractors and accessories for measuring the Hysteresis effect in soils.

Filter funnels and stands for removal of solution from saturated soil samples for chemical analysis.

1960's
Introduced:
The 15 Bar Ceramic material and the new 15 Bar Ceramic Extractor which greatly increased the efficiency of routine determinations of moisture retention curves for soils, a re-usable resource for soil / water measurements.

Soil Water Samplers for extraction of moisture from in situ soils for chemical analysis. A power-ful tool to measure and fight pollution in soils.

The Soil Core Sampler and Tempe Pressure Cells for convenient moisture studies on undisturbed soil cores.

Extended our line of porous ceramic products to offer an extended line of cups and plates in various sizes for OEM manufacturers and scientific community use in original designs.

1970's
Introduced:
Soil Salinity Sensors and the Salinity Bridge which, for the first time, made it possible to monitor soil salinity directly "in-situ", with senors buried in the soil over extended periods of time.

The Plant Water Status Console to measure leaf water potential directly in all types of leafy plants, for research work as well as irrigation control purposes.

The "Quick Draw" fast reading portable tensiometer and the innovative "Jet Fill" Tensiometer.

Moisture blocks and Meter for full growth range soil moisture readings, using electrical resistance of the blocks.

1980's
Introduced:
The Guelph Permeameter for easy field measurement of the permeability of soils, vital for drainage studies for waste disposal, sewer line placements, and in irrigation analysis.

Trase, the state of the art TDR (Time Domain Reflectometery) instrument for instant measurement of moisture content using time reflectometry analysis of signal energy. This was a major breakthrough in the ability to measure moisture instantly and has since become the "de-facto" method for fast accurate field measurements.

1990's
Introduced:
Win Trase software allowing analysis of TDR waveforms and remote operation of Trase. Development of 3 letter codes that allowed programmers to automate the operations of Trase using the RS-232 serial ports.

New waveguides developed for use with Trase for buriable use, and for heavy duty use called the "Slammer". These new heavy duty waveguides, specifically designed for optimal field use in bananas and melons..etc by corporate farming done by Dole, Delmonte and others.

2000's
Introducing:
The "Mini-Trase" a smaller version of our successful original Trase System 1 that now uses a Palm PDA interface to capture and command the Mini-Trase. The Palm PDA's then downloads data directly to the PC for analysis.

"SAPS", standing for System Analysis of Plant Sap. A briefcase size field instrument for mounting on ATV's, a continuation of our poplar Plant Water Status Console line.

We continue to add new and innovative equipment and systems that make a difference in more efficent research or in solving the complex problems of todays technical world. If you have a new idea or just looking for a solution that involves water, moisture or dielectrics give us a call. Let us add your idea or solution to the growing list of accomplishments that now span over 50 years.