2Institute of Environmental Sciences, Koblenz-Landau University, Landau, Germany
3Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland
Combined effects of climate change and increasing anthropogenic water demand have increased and extended dry period occurrences in rivers worldwide. Riverbed drying can significantly affect sediment microorganisms, crucial drivers of biogeochemical processes in lotic systems. In this study, we evaluated how sediment bacterial and fungal community structure and composition (based on 16S rRNA gene and ITS metabarcoding) and microbial functions (community respiration and extracellular enzymatic activities) respond to different riverbed drying intensities over 90 days. Riverbed sediment collected in a flowing reach of the Spree river in northeastern Germany was dried under different rates in outdoor mesocosms during the summer months of 2018. Our results demonstrate that drying attributes (duration and intensi
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
Soil Pathogen Mapping
News Reporter It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.
You’ve probably heard of soil maps and vegetation maps, but in the future could we actually see maps of the biology of the soil. Researchers in Australia have made strides of mapping soilborne pathogens using DNA sequencing. Dr McKay is the Leader of the Soil Biology and Molecular Diagnostics group at the South Australian Research and Development Institute.
McKay. “Essentially we re screening the roots using DNA technologies. We ve got some qPCR tests we can run fairly quickly and we ve got our next gen sequencing method that takes realistically two or three months to turn those results around. But we re optimizing that to pick up pathogens that we don t have qPCR tests for, and that s been really interesting. So what we ve essentially got now we ve sampled 850 paddocks over two years. We ve got a pretty large collection of samples. We ve only, just now comple
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A professor of Soil Science and Environmental Conservation, Nnenna Oti, on Tuesday, emerged the vice chancellor of the
With her emergence, Mrs Oti becomes the first female and eigth substantive vice-chancellor of the 41 years old university.
She is currently the deputy vice chancellor (Academics) of the institution.
She was a two-time dean of post-graduate school and a three-time head of department of soil science and technology in the School of Agricultural and Agriculture Technology (SAAT).
Mrs Oti is also the immediate past chairperson of the Gender Policy Unit.
The new vice chancellor holds a Bachelor of Agriculture degree (B.Agric) in Soil Science from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, UNN; (First Class Honours), Masters in Soil Science (Soil Biology and Biochemistry Option), UNN; a Postgraduate Diploma in Irrigation Engineering (Distinction) from Katholic University Leuven, Belgium and capped her academic laurels with a PhD in Soil and Environmental Conserv