Mollisol, one of the 12 soil orders in the U.S. Soil Taxonomy. Mollisols are characterized by a significant accumulation of humus in the surface horizon, or uppermost layer, which is almost always formed under native grass vegetation. They are highly arable soils used principally for growing grain and cereal crops, often inspiring the name “breadbasket” for the regions where they dominate. Covering approximately 6 percent of the nonpolar continental land area on Earth, they are found primarily in subhumid to semiarid grasslands in Europe, Asia, the Argentine Pampa, the Great Plains of North America, and the Palouse region of the northwestern United States.
The important mineral nutrients—calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium—are found through most, if not all, layers of the Mollisol soil profile. Below the surface horizon, Mollisols do not show major accumulations of humus or translocated (migrated) aluminum- and iron-bearing minerals. The uppermost zone has a characteristic dark colour, making for a striking profile and giving clear evidence of the decomposition of grass roots and of the wet-dry cycles over millennia that are essential to the formation of these soils.
Mollisols differ from Alfisols (another important agricultural soil) by their higher humus content, from Vertisols (another soil of grassland origin) by their lack of cracking or swelling, and from Ultisols (like Mollisols, a humus-rich soil) by their greater retention of available metal nutrients.