ACTIONr Webinar Series: Hydrogels as a technology to better understand and address soil dysbiosis
- Post by: smalls
- October 30, 2024
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Don’t miss the next session in our ACTIONr Webinar Series!
🔍 Webinar Title: Hydrogels as a technology to better understand and address soil dysbiosis
🎙️ Presenter: Dr. Mari Winkler
🏛️ Affiliation: Dr. Mari Winkler is a John R. Kiely Endowed Professor at Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Washington (US)
🗓️ Date: November 04, 2024
🕒 Time: 17:00-18:00 CET
Το register please contact us at actionr@uth.gr
Click here to download the poster
About the topic:
Current agricultural practices rely on the application of phosphorus (P) and synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers to sustain the high crop productivity required to meet the demands of a growing global population. However, many nutrients go unused due to the poor nutrient uptake efficiency of many agricultural crops, which compete with nitrifying microorganisms for synthetic nitrogen, and the mobilization of phosphorus and oxidized nitrogen species. The saturation of agricultural soils with excess nutrients increases our reliance on energy-intensive, non-renewable resources and contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater contamination, and surface water eutrophication. Therefore, sustainable alternatives are needed that decrease P/N input while inhibiting nitrification. The application of plant growth promoting bacteria and -arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal consortia capable of sourcing nitrogen from the atmosphere and residual phosphorus from the soil holds the potential to decrease anthropogenic nutrient input. This work presents an integrated approach to alleviating excess nutrient input. Hydrogel encased microbial-fungal communities were applied to agricultural soils resulting in increased plant yields and may also hold the capability of increasing soil carbon storage. Synthetic sediment aggregates were developed as a tool to study the impact of spatial structure on microbial-fungal nutrient transformations. Finally, investigations into nitrifier catabolite-repression and nitrate reduction increased our understanding of nitrogen cycling processes and should be considered as targets for future biological nitrification inhibitors.
🌟 Featuring Mari Winkler Dr. Winkler (Mari) is a John R. Kiely Endowed Professor at Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Washington (US). She studied at the University Duisburg Essen (DE) (Chemistry Department), at University of British Columbia (CA) (Microbiology and Immunology Department), at Columbia University (US) (Earth and Environmental Engineering Department), and at the University of New South Wales (AU) in the Marine-Microbiology Department. She received her PhD from the Environmental Biotechnology Department at Delft University of Technology (NL) and did a Marie-Curie Postdoc at Ghent University (BE). She also worked as a sales manager (DE, AT) and as a consultant (NL) shaping her application driven research. Dr Winkler received several prizes for her work (AEESP outstanding PhD dissertation award, Paul L. Busch Award, Huber Technology prize, Jaap van de Graaf award, B-IWA industry award, ISME-IWA Biocluster award, and Rhurverband water award). Her academic interests include microbial ecology of aquatic and terrestrial pure and mixed culture communities, mathematical modeling of microbial interactions, which she implements to develop novel biotechnology for water treatment and soil quality improvement.