FAO recently released its first ever report on "The state of knowledge of soil biodiversity" on World Soil Day, which falls on 5 December. The report on the state of knowledge of soil biodiversity, covering its current status, challenges and potentialities, was produced in response to an invitation by the 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for FAO, in collaboration with other organizations, to consider its preparation. The report represents the output of an inclusive process involving 300 scientists from around the world under the auspices of the FAO Global Soil Partnership and its Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, the CBD, the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative and the European Commission. It presents the state of knowledge on soil biodiversity, the threats it faces, the solutions that soil biodiversity can provide to problems in different fields, including agriculture, environmental conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, nutrition, medicine and pharmaceuticals, and remediation of polluted sites, and more. The report also considers the role of molecular approaches to studying soil biodiversity. See the 618-page report at www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/CB1928EN, its ‘Summary for policy makers’ at www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/CB1929EN and the related press release at http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1339016/icode/ (in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish). Contact [email protected] for more information.