Understanding the Munsell scale: Munsell colour notation has three components - hue (the colour itself), value (lightness/darkness), and chroma (colour purity).
The value scale runs from 0 (pure black) to 10 (pure white), so a value of 0 represents the darkest possible soil colour.
Dark soil colour is strongly associated with a high concentration of humified organic matter, which absorbs light and masks the underlying mineral colour, so a Munsell value of 0 indicates a high level of organic matter.