Orchard Soil Health—Current Challenges and Future Perspectives

Globally, orchard soils are facing multiple severe health issues. However, different countries and regions have adopted their own soil classification standards, making many studies only useful for improving soil health in local orchards but not widely applicable to other regions. This fragmentation highlights the urgent need for internationally comparable approaches to orchard soil health assessment. Furthermore, there are currently no unified standards for screening orchard soil health indicators or establishing comprehensive evaluation indices. Many proposed orchard soil health assessment frameworks lack practical applicability. This review introduces and compares several soil health assessment methods, critically analyzes their limitations, and explores directions for improvement in their application to orchards. Additionally, it addresses the primary challenges, currently and in the future, facing orchard soil health—climate change and emerging contaminants. This review also evaluates current orchard soil health management practices, focusing on their advantages and limitations. Finally, this paper offers recommendations for data acquisition and analysis in future orchard soil health assessment frameworks and encourages the establishment of a Decision-Making Platform for Soil Health with Cross-Border Cooperation and Feedback, thereby promoting a more globally consistent perspective on orchard soil health.