RIVERSIDE — Urban agriculture offers many benefits for food production but often has higher costs relative to traditional farming and is limited to only a few crops.
CSUMB Professor Wins Award for Innovative Soil Research
Wednesday May 12th, 2021
News Reporter With California Ag Today, I’m Tim Hammerich.
A professor at Cal State Monterey Bay was recently awarded a New Innovator in Food & Agriculture Research Award to continue work on understanding the microbial makeup of healthy Soils. JP Dundore-Arias says his research is studying the effects of cropping systems on plant growth by understanding what promotes beneficial soil biology.
Dundore-Arias… “It s more like probiotics, the same way that when you take antibiotics, your doctor will tell you to finish your antibiotics. But the antibiotics are not going to be as specific. They re also going to get rid of a bunch of other good microbes that are in your gut. So you can try to replenish those healthy microbial communities in your gut. So the same way, that is what we re trying to see, what is present in the soils where the disease happens or takes place very, very badly. A
Subsurface compaction can be tested by measuring soil penetration resistance with a penetrologger. Compacted soil doesn’t absorb water very well and makes it difficult for plants to establish roots.
WSU | Apr 07, 2021
While soil compaction happens below the surface, it has many above-ground impacts on crops.
Compacted soil doesn’t absorb water very well, makes it hard for plants to send out roots, inhibits plant nutrient absorption and can reduce crop yield by up to 20%.
Now with a three-year $450,000 New Innovator in Food & Agriculture Research Award from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), Washington State University researcher Haly Neely will lead a team to study soil compaction on farms in Washington and beyond. Neely discusses the award on this episode of WSU’s Wheat Beat podcast.