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Living Lab B7 — With farmers, citizens, visitors and policy makers
Living Lab B7 wil de biodiversiteit in de Bollenstreek verbeteren. Dit doen we door inzichten over biodiversiteit te delen en ter plekke toe te passen. Co-creatie en kennisontwikkeling in de praktijk, samen met lokale partijen. -
Water hyacinths: use them or lose them?
Water hyacinths: use them or lose them? Improving human and ecosystem health by bringing the science to the people of Lake Chivero, Zimbabwe
Water hyacinth (WHY), an invasive species in (sub-)tropical inland waters, clogs waterways and affects aquatic life and human activities, in addition, it can facilitate the spread of diseases. On the other hand, water hyacinth can be exploited to produce biofuels and other sources of income. A sustainable solution to water hyacinth encroachment "uses" WHY rather than just trying to "get rid of it". This project will use scientific research, satellite data and stakeholder experiences to co-create such solutions for Lake Chivero, the main source of drinking water for Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. This project is coordinated by Professor Timothy Dube (University of the Western Cape) & Dr. Ing. Marloes Penning de Vries (University of Twente). Consortium partners: University of the Witwatersrand; IHE Delft Institute for Water Education; Environmental Management Agency; Midlands State University; Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) -
Climate change impacts on harmful algal blooms
Harmful cyanobacterial blooms produce toxins that are a major threat to water quality and human health. Blooms increase with eutrophication and are expected to be amplified by climate change. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding on the toxicity of blooms, and their response to the complex interplay of multiple global change factors. Bloom toxicity is determined by a combination of mechanisms acting at different ecological scales, ranging from cyanobacterial biomass accumulation in the ecosystem, to the dominance of toxic species in the community, contribution of toxic genotypes in the population, and the amounts of toxins in cells. -
Galapagos Microbiome Project
An international research team led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently under threat. -
Steering the microbial community composition of bio-waste for tailor-made organic fertilizers
Producing tailor made-fertilizer from steering cultivation conditions of photogranules -
Rapid evolutionary adaptation to multiple stressors: cross-tolerance or cross-inhibition?
Due to anthropogenic activities, the global environment is changing rapidly, and is expected to continue doing so over the coming decades. Many of these changes lead to increased levels of stress to living organisms with negative impacts on their natural populations. Rapid evolutionary adaptation is increasingly recognized as an important mechanism that increases the coping ability of multicellular organisms to deal with increased stress levels. Applying an experimental evolution approach with freshwater zooplankton, we aim at testing specific hypotheses related to the causes and consequences of rapid adaptation to increased stress levels (e.g. poor food quality, salinization, warming and copper contamination). Our recent research focuses strongly on a multiple stressor context and addresses questions such as whether adaptation to one stressor impedes or enhances abilities to cope with other stressors and how past selection regimes determine the evolutionary potential of populations to adapt to new stressors. -
Harnessing the rhizosphere microbiome to enhance plant productivity
In Bio-Based Economy, plant materials are an essential resource for new industrial and sustainable applications. To ensure the production of sufficient plant biomass there is a need of mineral fertilizers. However, intensive fertilization causes leaching and run-off of nutrients, reduction in biodiversity, production of greenhouse gasses, global warming and changes in soil pH leading to environmental degradation. A key challenge is to intensify agricultural production methods in a way that minimizes harmful environmental effects of fertilizers. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new strategies that optimize plant growth and minimize abiotic and biotic factors that adversely affect plant growth and quality. The plant microbiome, i.e. the collective microbial communities associated with plants, harbors various fungal and bacterial genera that have beneficial effects on plant growth and health. Several bacterial genera promote plant growth and induce systemic resistance in plants against pathogens as well as insect pests. Recent 'omics'-based studies revealed that specific rhizobacteria cause substantial transcriptional changes in plants, leading to elevated levels of specific plant genes expression. Brazilian sugarcane production system is being developed towards to sustainable manner by recycling straw and vinasse (byproduct of ethanol industry), which combined practices allow less mineral fertilizers to be added into soil. In addition, the use of beneficial bacteria, such as plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) isolated from sugarcane rhizosphere has shown to increase plant growth and health under controlled situation. However, detailed investigation and fundamental understanding of the effect of these PGPB in different sugarcane genotypes in different soils containing different microbial community are urgent need. Therefore, this proposal aims to: (i) determine the effect of different soil microbial community composition on sugarcane growth inoculated with PGPB; (ii) identify the PGPB traits and genes involved in plant growth promotion; (iii) identify the plant traits and genes involved in plant growth promotion induced by PGPB. Potential applications of this proposal will be (i) the identified PGPB traits and genes to ensure or enhance plant biomass, yield and quality; (ii) the identified genotype-specific genes induced by PGPB responsible for enhancing plant productivity. The proposed project will provide new insights into mechanisms, traits and genes underlying PGPB-plant interactions and will yield new leads and tools to ensure/enhance sugarcane biomass for bio-based economy -
Succession of microbial functions in degraded saline soil restoration
The global saline-alkali land area has already exceeded 1.1 billion hectares. China has about 100 million hectares. Rice cultivation has been used as an effective strategy to amend saline-alkaline lands in northeastern Songnen Plain in China since the 1950s. However, it is not known the role of microbial functions during succession of soil restoration. The aim of this project is to fundamental understanding the microbial functions succession during the saline soil restoration. -
Restoring degraded lands with microbial inoculants
Land degradation usually leads to a reduction in soil fertility, decline of plant productivity, and loss of biodiversity. Introducing beneficial microbial inoculants to degraded lands represents a promising and sustainable strategy. The aim of this project is to reveal the ecological roles of microbial inoculants and soil-resident microbial community in restoring both belowground biodiversity and aboveground productivity in the degraded land. -
Long-term Ca-based amendments impact on microbiome and N processes in the rhizosphere and soil in tropical no-till intercropping system
Unsustainable agricultural management practices such as non-conservationist tillage and overuse of fertilizers result in soil acidity and, in turn, soil degradation due to reduced carbon (C) concentrations and nutrient availability and increased aluminum toxicity. Application of lime (L) and phosphogypsum (PG) can overcome these constraints and improve soil quality, but the long-term effects of these amendments on both abiotic and biotic soil properties are not known, particularly when applied in combination. Here, we evaluate the effects of L (acidity corrective), PG (soil conditioner), and their combination (LPG) on soil organic matter (SOM) transformations, soil chemical and physical properties, microbiome assembly, N uptake by intercropped plants, maize yield, archaeal and bacterial abundances, and N cycle genes in the maize and ruzigrass rhizospheres in a long-term field experiment in tropical soil with a no-till maize and forage ruzigrass intercropping system.