The three most commonly used techniques for the recovery, identification, and enumeration of plant parasitic nematodes from soil were evaluated for efficiency and consistency for the extraction of the reniform (Rotylenchulus reniformis) nematode in light to mixed texture soils. The results indicated that there were significant differences in nematode extraction numbers among the three methods, and that the elutriation-centrifugation method gave the highest recovery numbers and the lowest variation among the sub-samples.