News

Paper published today in Soil Biology & Biochemistry that used a 13C labelling technique to investigate the source(s) of C that fuel the pulse of respired CO2 and growth in microbial biomass when a dry soil is re-wet. The main findings were: Trehalose was the most 13C-enriched pool in dry soil, indicating upregulation of synthesis …

PhD student Grace Liang’s paper on membrane lipids in plants and soil microbes has been published in Plant and Soil.

Hot off the press in Plant and Soil, our paper investigates the turnover of leaf lipids in soil. We developed a workflow involving extraction of U-13C lipids from wheat grown with 13CO2, and their subsequent minimally invasive and rapid addition to soil as a suspension in water. Loss of intact lipid was determined from LC-MS, …

Paper led by Samantha Grover published in Soil Research explores N dynamics in four mountain soils from south-eastern Australia. Moderate turnover times and high stabilization of organic matter support Costin’s theory that these mountain soils formed in place as a result of biological activity, rather than reflecting their geological substrata. The pools of organic N …

Paper published today in Soil Biology & Biochemistry describing a new way to estimate growth of soil microbes. We developed an analytical pipeline centred around D2O as a universal label coupled with LC-MS quantification of intact polar lipids. Quantification of 2H enrichment of a broad spectrum of lipids was possible in soils incubated with 50 …

Two PhD scholarships are available now to investigate interactive effect of plants, microbes and mineralogy in stabilisation of organic matter. Follow the links for further details: project 1;   project 2

A 3 year postdoc position is available in the plant-soil interactions lab. Use imaging, metabolomics, isotope labeling, metagenomics to uncover how plants alter the biophysical processes in the rhizosphere.  For details and to apply

Project led by Balwant Singh, Feike Dijkstra and Charles Warren has been funded by soil science challenge.  The project will investigate the role of plants in organic matter stabilization.

We are delighted to share our proposal entitled “The critical role of rhizosheath biophysics in plant water availability” has been funded by the Australian Research Council.  Chief Investigators are Charles Warren,  Iain Young, Richard Trethowan and Sheikh Rabbi (all from University of Sydney) Project summary This project aims to determine how plants can increase their …

Paper published today in Soil Biology & Biochemistry describing estimation of metabolite synthesis from D2O labelling and mass spectrometry. Soil respiration was unaffected by up to 87 atom% D2O. D2O addition led to quantifiable 2H enrichment of metabolites. Turnover of pools due to synthesis differed among metabolites from ten days to multiple years.