Managing the soil community to promote inclusive plant health and improve crop resilience
The International Year of Plant Health highlights the
importance of protecting crops against the onslaught of pest and disease in a
sustainable manner. Meaningful progress towards this objective will require not
just replacing environmentally disruptive pesticides with ones that are less
so. Required is a fundamental understanding of the ecological drivers that make
our agroecosystems so susceptible to biotic and abiotic stressors. We need to
then redesign crop management, moving away from the sole goal of maximizing
production. Rather, a more holistic production system is required that also
promotes crop resistance to pests and resilience to unfavorable weather events.
Illustrating the importance of a systems perspective for crop production is the
growth in our understanding of the central role potentially played by the soil community
in mediating inclusive plant health. The concept of biological buffering
asserts that the increased biocomplexity associated with organic matter inputs
and a carbon-based food web modulates abiotic and biotic variability while
evading conditions favorable to pest outbreaks and plant stress. As such, the
concept extends the capacity of soil organic matter to buffer physicochemical
soil parameters to higher‐order
buffering of biological interactions, both below ground and above ground. In
this seminar, I shall review studies that test biological buffering and its
underlying mechanisms, while demonstrating how we can employ the soil community
to promote plant health by suppressing insects and weeds.
BIO
Trained
as a chemical ecologist, most of my research now focuses on organic farming and
the ecosystem services provided by the soil community.
Education
University
of California, Riverside, CA. Ph.D. in Entomology, 1984.
Michigan
State University, E. Lansing, MI. M.S. in Entomology, 1981.
The
College of Wooster, Wooster, OH. B.A. in Biology, 1976.
Employment
1998-present:
Professor, Dept. of Entomology, OARDC/The Ohio State University.
1991-1998:
Assoc. Professor, Dept. of Entomology, OARDC/The Ohio State University.
1986-1991:
Asst. Professor, Dept. of Entomology, OARDC/The Ohio State University.
1984-1985: Postdoctoral Researcher, Dept. of Entomology, Univ. of California, Riverside.
Thanks for sharing valuable information
ResponderEliminarCPR Certification UCR Riverside CA
Very good blog. Thankyou for the post.
ResponderEliminarFirst Aid Certification Riverside
Thanks for sharing this informative Artical.
ResponderEliminarPALS Online Moreno Valley
Informative blog post! Clear, concise, and full of valuable insights. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
ResponderEliminarACLS Certification in Highland
Get trained in essential first aid skills with First Aid Certification in Jacumba.
ResponderEliminarGreat blog with informative content.
ResponderEliminarNurse Assistant Training Program (NATP) in Palm Springs