土壌

1. Origins, structure, and basic meaning

• Structure: 土壌 (どじょう) is a noun for the soil of land and its physical properties.
• Basic usage: 土壌は水を通す makes the land’s soil the topic with a drainage property, while 土壌の試料 specifies the material of a sample collected from a field.

2. Common pitfalls and similar expressions

• Soil body and soil sample
  • The head noun in 土壌の試料 is 試料, so what was collected is a portion for examination, not all the field’s soil. The drainage property in the first example is not asserted as a result from that one sample.