Magnetic susceptibility approach as a simple, relatively inexpensive, fast and non-destructive method has been used in a wide range of rocks and soil studies in the past few decades. Although the measurement of magnetic susceptibility is simple but interpretation of the results is complicated and typically requires knowledge of the effective controlling factors. Soil great group determination explained by Soil Survey Manual, is expensive and time consuming. Hence, this study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of magnetic susceptibility technique for discrimination different soil great groups in the Zarand district, Kerman province. Best of our knowledge, no attempt has been made in Iran to evaluate magnetic susceptibility in this regard. In order to examine the hypotheses of this study, soil samples from the 100 profiles already drug and described by Jafari (2012) were used; some soil physical and chemical properties as well as magnetic susceptibility at low (0.46 kHz) and high (4.6 kHz) frequencies were measured. Crystallized and amorphous iron forms were also measured using citrate bicarbonate dithionite and oxalate- ammonium, respectively. The results showed that the highest values of ? lf in three studied depths (surface, control section and subsurface soil) were observed in Torriorthents great group. Following the Torriorthents, the highest ? lf was ascribed to Torripsamments great group in control section and subsurface soil. Negative significant relationships were obtained between Fe o /Fe d , ? lf, ? fd and ? hf . Positive correlations were observed between Fe d , ? lf, and ? hf , whereas other soil physical and chemical properties had no significant correlation with magnetic measures. The results of predictor models developed by discriminate analysis showed that use of magnetic susceptibility solely couldn't correctly predict profiles in various soil great groups. Incorporation of magnetic susceptibility with some chemical and physical soil properties enhanced the accuracy of prediction. Combination of soil properties with magnetic measures improved prediction accuracy to 57.8, 57.8 and 36.7 %, respectively. The overall results revealed that the magnetic susceptibility can't solely be used as indicator for discrimination of soil great groups. Moreover, based on the results the highest accuracy was obtained for the moisture control section and surface as compared to subsurface samples. Keywords : Soil great groups, Magnetic susceptibility, Discriminate analysis.
