A project undertaken at University of Melbourne, and supervised by Thi Nguyen
Meeting sufficient food demand for feeding 10 billion people by 2050 while reducing threats of agrochemicals and soil-borne pathogens to the planet’s health is one of the major global challenges to food production and security worldwide. Under scenarios of climate change, the use of agrochemicals (e.g., fertilizers) for crop production is increasingly discouraged due to negative environmental impacts and increasing costs. Alternative and effective approaches to safeguard and enhance plant growth and productivity in Australia is extremely important.
Figure 1.
Protists, unicellular eukaryotes, are primary predators of bacteria and fungi. Protists are potential contributors to nutrient cycling in plant rhizosphere by unlocking nutrients in microbial biomass and benefiting plants. Nevertheless, the protist diversity and their roles in nutrient cycle and crop productivity are surprisingly underexplored.
Figure 2.
This project will address these knowledge gaps by unravelling the relative contributions of protists to essential soil and plant nutrients and tomato productivity by integrating cutting-edge methods. The project’s success will enhance our understanding and capacity to harness beneficial indigenous protists and other soil microbes to improve soil nutrients and plant development in near future.