**1. Introduction**

Adequate soil physical and hydrological conditions are key conditions for full plant development, which is a premise for coffee quality exportation due to requirements for grain quality and crop uniformity [1]. However, in the main coffee producing region of Brazil, there have been severe droughts. Although soils are mostly deep and able to store a large volume of water, they present small effective depth for the development of the root system, resulting in the edaphic drought, which has brought many losses to coffee farmers. This situation is aggravated in soils of oxide mineralogy and with very small granular structure, which condition the formation

of pores with extreme diameters [2]. Thus, it leads to very rapid loss of water stored in very large pores, or to its strong retention in extremely small pores.

A number of measures have been sought by Brazilian researchers to solve the problems, such as selecting drought tolerant plants [3, 4]. However, a measure that has attracted the attention of most producers is the adoption of soil management systems that provide the best development of the root system of coffee crops and physical-hydrological adequacy of the soil.

Therefore, this chapter will discuss the main limitations of soils used in the main coffee growing area of Brazil and the mitigation techniques for soil suitability based on research that have been developed for over a decade.
