Alliance expert: Dr. Kari Dunfield
Understanding how management practices impact soil health and yield
School of Environmental Sciences, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph
Behind just about every process that supports food security and sustains growth and life on our planet are soil microbes. Dr. Kari Dunfield is working to understand these microbial communities and how they’re impacted by different soil management practices.
Research focus in the agri-food sector
Dunfield and her team focus on soil microbial communities and linking sustainable agricultural practices to long-term changes in soil biodiversity and overall soil health.
Their unique approach involves using DNA and RNA gene sequencing techniques to identify the microorganisms (bacteria, fungi) found across Ontario’s soil landscape and learn what roles these microorganisms play.
Support from the Alliance
- Tier 1 operating funding
- Knowledge Translation and Transfer (KTT)
- Access to research centres owned by Agricultural Research and Innovation Ontario
- Special Initiatives
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Research that's making an impact
Better plant growth and yield: By understanding the mix of organisms and their roles in Ontario soils, Dunfield and her team can pinpoint how different microbe populations can either lead to greater plant growth and higher yield or prove to be pathogenic and even create greenhouse gas emissions.
Using microbial communities as an indicator of soil health: Their ultimate goal is to learn which agricultural practices can promote and support the growth of beneficial microorganisms, as well as which practices to avoid.
Helping farmers safeguard soil: This research will give farmers recommendations that will help them safeguard soil health while maximizing their productivity over the long term.
Transferring knowledge: Dunfield’s gene sequencing work also helps to ensure that Ontario’s soils—and the microbial communities they contain—are better understood and represented within the wider soil microbiology community.
- Read more about how Dunfield and Soils at Guelph researchers are mobilizing soil health knowledge in Talking dirt(y): Alliance-supported soil knowledge mobilization at University of Guelph breaks plenty of new ground
Highly qualified personnel training and education
As part of Dunfield’s research team, graduate students get into the field and gain a hands-on understanding of soil microbiology and its impact on agricultural systems and soils. They also gain experience in complex, lab-based microorganism gene sequencing work—much of which has never been done in Ontario.
Dunfield’s current team includes:
- Four post-docs
- Three PhD students
- Seven master’s students
- One bachelor of science student
Industry and academic collaboration
In addition to support from the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, Dunfield’s work is funded by the Grain Farmers of Ontario and by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
Dunfield is also a co-founder of Soils at Guelph, a multidisciplinary team of researchers and communicators working to get soil knowledge into the hands of growers and other industry stakeholders.
Future directions
Dunfield is collaborating with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness to communicate with farmers about the importance of soil biology and how it impacts the sustainability of production systems.
She and her team are also working to quantify biodiversity across Ontario topsoils.
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