abstract: Wettability of mineral soils impact their hydrophysical properties like matric potential, water retention and water transport coefficients, and parameters such as water sorptivity and water diffusivity. Wetting angle is a generally accepted measure of wettability in physics, chemistry and agriculture. In the case of mineral and organic soils its direct measurement is impossible for the reason of the granular character of all soils. Indirect methods based on the bundle model and the Washburn theory have to overestimate its value for the reason of non cylindricity of soil pores. Above conclusion results from the mathematical model of capillarity in non-cylindrical pores elaborated for the project purposes. This model, being a generalization of the Washburn approach, shows that pore shape impacts meniscus movement and it cannot be neglected when wetting angle is determined. Moreover it explains the nature of apparent wetting angle. Non-cylindricity of soil pores has a great significance for soil water retention. It fallows from theoretical consideration that the wetting angle value for which there is no capillary sorption is closely related to pore geometry understood as pore wall slope in relation to the meniscus movement direction. Critical wetting angle is the sum of true wetting angle and the maximum wall slope in an examined pore and its value can be much smaller than 90°. Experimental verification of above hypothesis was done through measurements of capillary driven water movement in 50-200m quartz sand with 4 hydrophobisation levels and 5 soils taken from arable fields of diversified grain size distributions from light sand to heavy clay soil: Haplic Arenosol, Haplic Cambisol, Haplic Luvisol, Haplic Phaeozems, Haplic Leptosol (WRB). Hydrophysical properties of all soils were measured in 2 states: natural and after SOM removal. The following analysis and measurements for all soils were done: grain size distribution. carbon, nitrogen content and humus fraction, CGMS compositions of humus, water sorptivity, apparent wetting angle, water retention and water diffusivity. Soil humus impact on measured characteristics and parameters was estimated by comparison of the results for natural soils and for those after SOM removal. The conducted investigations prove that soil wettability depends on the true wetting angle and soil pore geometry. Currently applied methods of wetting angle measurements allow to quantify so called apparent angle which is/can be 2-3 times larger in relation to the true one. The new model worked out of non-cylindrincal pore, being a generalisation of the Washburn approach, allows to understand the physical reasons of observed discrepancy and to better interpret experimental results concerning hydrophysical properties of mineral soils of limited wettability. Experiments show that the apparent wetting angle is positively correlated with SOM content. However, identification of SOM components responsible for that was not successful because we did not find any good correlation of it with fulvic, humic acids and humins contents in the investigated soils. Gas chromatography allowed to find ca. 100 organic compounds in 5 investigated soils but only 2 of them - hexanedioic C8H14O4 and heneicosanoic C22 H14O4 acids - show a hydrophilic character (at significance level  = 0.1). SOM significantly impacts water characteristics of mineral soils. Theoretical model predictions concerning drying and wetting branches of water retention were confirmed. Wetting branch is very sensitive to the wetting angle, while drying one remains almost unchanged. Moreover, it was shown that water retention is a feature of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic soils. Capillary porous media like soils imbibe soil water when the true wetting angle is lower than the critical value which depends on surface soil properties and soil pore topology. Soil hydrophobisation is a result of SOM covering soil solid phase. Model investigations with quartz sand suggest that the true wetting angle range fulfilling porous medium wettability (imbibitions) amounts to 10° rather than 90°. In consequence, a relatively small increase of true wetting angle, being a result of SOM, provokes a great change of soil water sorptivity and water diffusion coefficient characteristics in all soils and throughout the whole soil moisture content range. In consequence an increase of SOM content must decrease the dynamics of water transport processes in soils.