A short-term greenhouse cropping procedure was developed to evaluate the zinc status of soils. In this procedure» corn plants are grown in sand culture in such a way that the actively-growing roots can be placed in contact with a small volume of soil (100 grams) for two weeks. This results in an exhaustive removal of available zinc from the soil/ and the zinc content of the corn plants gives a measure of the zinc status of the soil. In each cropping experiment/ a standard soil known to be deficient in zinc is included to provide a means for comparison. By using this technique to evaluate the zinc status of 10 Ecuadorian soils/ it was determined that 3 of the 10 soils were possibly deficient in zinc.