Soil Science Cluster WUR

Editorial for Special Issue on “Soil Solutions for a Sustainable World” Click on the article title to read more.

📣 The special issue of the Wageningen Soil Conference 2023 on “Soil Solutions for a Sustainable World” 🌱 was recently finalized with contributions from the four soil cluster departments (SBL, SGL, SOC and SLM)

You can find it here:

bsssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🎓 Last week our Tullia Calogiuri (working at the interface between soil chemistry & biology) defended her PhD thesis "The role of earthworms in enhanced mineral weathering - understanding their impact on carbon dynamics and sustainable fertilisation". 🪱🪨

✨Thesis: research.wur.nl/en/publicati...

📣Reminder for the next Soil cluster special seminar next week 4th March, don't miss it!

The four soil cluster funded PhD students will present their work!✨

see you there at 13:00 in Lumen1/2👈

💫 New PhD position out now in an exciting project on novel protein crops 🪴

Research is embedded within the Soil Biology Group (SBL) and Soil Geography and Landscape (SGL), with supervision by Prof. Ellis Hoffland, Dr. Marie Zwetsloot and Dr. Julian Helfenstein.

Check it out: 🌍 🔬 lnkd.in/e9qhCTvs

Glued forever: incomplete dispersion hampers POM-MAOM fractionation in soils with high SOC and metal (hydr)oxide content Fractionation of soil organic carbon (SOC) into particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) has contributed to our u…

📢 New paper out in Geoderma with many SBL and SOC colleagues!
“Glued forever: incomplete dispersion hampers POM–MAOM fractionation in soils with high SOC and metal (hydr)oxide content.” ▶️https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706126000327

📣Publication alert📃

"Temperature Response of Soil Organic Matter Decomposition Rates: Construction and Applications of a Temperature Gradient Block" led by our PhD student Karen Moran Rivera, shows a practical way to study how sensitive to climate is soil carbon!🌡️

app.jove.com/t/69785/temp...

A scoping review of temperate food forestry research: key themes, methodological considerations and research priorities - Agroforestry Systems There is increasing interest in practice and policy in the use of polycultures composed of a tree layer integrated with multiple other perennial vegetation layers (“food forests”) in temperate regions...

📃📣Publication alert!

A great collaborative effort merging science&practice on temperate food forests🌳🍎🪱

👉"A scoping review of temperate food forestry research: key themes, methodological considerations and research priorities" - featuring our own Giulia Bongiorno

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📣🎉We invite you to a symposium on advances in luminescence dating and tracing, hosted by the Netherlands Centre for Luminescence dating, in occasion of the PhD defence of Anna Maartje de Boer with thesis ‘From light signals to sediment pathways: Developing luminescence as a tracing tool’. ✨

📣 On 20th February in the frame of Tullia Calogiuri’s defense (SOC-SBL) we are pleased to welcome two international scientists for a session on: “Biotic and geochemical controls on soil carbon dynamics and carbon removal.”

We look forward to seeing many of you there!

10:30–12:00 (Lumen 1, WUR)

Enhanced weathering and biochar co-deployment boosts CO2 sequestration through changing soil properties Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and biochar are potentially effective and scalable options for large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR), required to li…

📢 New publication by Emily te Pas, PhD at SOC, looking at the combination of enhanced rock weathering and biochar for CO2 sequestration. 🪨

This work dives into mechanistic understanding of physico-chemical changes in soil properties during these applications!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

💫 Yesterday, Tanvi Taparia (Assistant professor and group leader at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark) gave a clear and insightful for the soil cluster speech about 'Harnessing social interactions in the plant and soil microbiome' 🦠 🦠

Great to discuss about pathobiome and microbial consortia!

The third edition of our course "Research Method in Soil Biology" in on! Experiments, discussions, and curiosity about soil life is what the students are experiencing!
A big thank you to Michiel in t' Zandt that is coordinating the course, and to all our staff members involved in it 🧪🍄🪱🧫🦠

Ecology & Society: Connecting wildfire risk reduction and land stewardship: social learning through adaptation pathways in Montseny, Catalonia (Spain) Wildfire management is becoming an increasingly complex issue that requires collaboration of diverse sectors. In addition, it is important to empower local communities to contribute to the decision-ma...

📣Curious about transdisciplinary wildfire management? Enjoy the recently published paper "Connecting wildfire risk reduction and land stewardship: social learning through adaptation pathways in Montseny, Catalonia (Spain)" 🔥 led by Dr. Uyttewaal (SLM group).

ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss4/a...

CURIOSOIL Community of Practice Leaders Recruitment Netherlands - Deadline 02/02/2026 End of day We foster soil education through the CURIOSOIL project. Our aim is to cultivate a more soil-literate society through education. One of our mission is to facilitate a Community of Practice (CoP) (http...

⁉️🪱CURIOSOIL Community of Practice Leaders Recruitment Netherlands:

Apply to become a CoP leader in the context of the CURIOSOIL European project and shape soil education and sustainability initiatives in the Netherlands!

Interested? read more here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

👏 New timelapse inspired by “healthy soils for healthy cities” illustrating why you should be careful not to include plastic or cigarette butts in your vermicompost bin 🪱 🪱

by Wim van Egmond, with Gerlinde De Deyn, Ingrid Lubbers&Jan Willem van Groenigen from SBL and SGL!

Here: lnkd.in/enbjVE95

🪱 📢 Great news! The abstract submission deadline for ISEE13 has been extended - now January 31st, 2026.

You can enjoy relaxed holidays 🎄✨ and return in the new year with fresh energy and even more enthusiasm for earthworms 🪱.

We look forward to your contributions!
event.wur.nl/isee13/home-...

•📢 🪱 🎉Abstract submissions are now OPEN for the upcoming 13th International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology (ISEE13) — hosted in Wageningen, from August 23–28, 2026!
➡️https://event.wur.nl/isee13/author

•🔗🪱🌍 Discover the speaker lineup and our initial program: ➡️ event.wur.nl/isee13/new-p...

Impact of bio-organic amendment supplemented with phosphate-solubilizing bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on sugarcane cultivation - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Impact of bio-organic amendment supplemented with phosphate-solubilizing bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on sugarcane cultivation

🚨 New publication alert! Hot off the press: a study co-authored by our very own Thom Kuyper 🌱. It explores the effect of organic amendments and microbial inoculation on sugarcane cultivation.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣🎉The upcoming December Soil Science Cluster seminar is approaching!

“Animal as Earth engineers: knowns, unknowns and the need for rewilding?” by Jeppe Aagaard Kristensen from Aarhus University (Denmark)

When: 4th of December from 16:00 to 17:00
Where: Gaia 1 (WUR).

Don't miss it!

A Mechanistic Understanding of the Effect of Lime and Compost on Soil Cadmium Availability in Cacao Farms To develop soil amendments that effectively lower cadmium uptake by food crops, a mechanistic understanding is needed of the factors influencing Cd availability in amended soils. This insight is highly relevant in the context of food safety regulations affecting the cacao sector in Latin America. Geochemical multisurface models (MSMs) can be used to generate such knowledge, yet their potential for this purpose remains underexplored. We performed a laboratory incubation experiment with five different soils from cacao farms, which we amended with four types of compost at a rate equivalent to 30 t ha–1, with or without the addition of 1.75 t ha–1 lime (CaCO3). The MSM showed a high ability to capture proportional changes in Cd availability enacted by the treatments based on changes in soil solution properties measured with a low-salt extraction (0.001 M Ca(NO3)2) or rhizon samplers. In general, the effect of compost and lime on Cd geochemistry was highly soil- and compost-specific, and pH (change) was found to be the main driver of Cd availability. Additionally, we used diffusive gradient in thin film (DGT) devices to gain insight into Cd availability over time. Despite being a minor adsorption surface for Cd compared to organic matter, the MSM-assisted interpretation of DGT results suggests an important role for clay particles in Cd buffering. Our work helps explain the often ambiguous effects of soil amendments on Cd uptake by plants and positions MSMs as capable tools for the design of management strategies aimed at mitigating Cd in cacao.

📣🎉This new publication led by Wietse Wiersma (SOC/SGL) provides insights into the factors influencing Cd availability in soils amended with lime and/or compost. This is highly relevant in the context of food safety regulations affecting the cacao sector!

Read it here: pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

👏 👏 🎉 🎉 Congratulations to Wietse Wiersma who recently defended his thesis here at Soil Chemistry Group!
His work, led by Bert Jan van Groenenberg, explored soil geochemical constraints on Cd uptake in Cacao using multisurface modeling approach.

For further details lnkd.in/eeYAwxPB

📃🪱🪨 Have you ever thought about the role that not just living, but even dead earthworms play in carbon capture through mineral weathering? 🪱🪨

🧨Check out the newly fresh paper, published in Nature communications earth and environment led by our PhD student Tullia Calogiuri ➡️ lnkd.in/e5P8ucpc

📃Publication "Sustainable intensification: time to question the goal of ever-increasing agricultural production" Gabriel Moinet (SBL) et al.

Land use intensity effect on soil multifunctionality? Challenging the claims that productivity can increase without trade-offs

www.scopus.com/pages/public...

Here the poster

🪱🪱Busy looking for earthworms today in the Earthworm Hotel CALIWORMIA!✨ The Hotel is a precious infrastructure that we use to look for earthworms for scientific experiments, a part than using it for outreach! 🥼📃

You can find more information here: www.wur.nl/en/show/hote... and the poster attached!

The project Benchmarks is calling all soil science experts in EU working on soil function models in agricultural, forest & urban systems🌾🌳🏙️

Help shape a science-based framework for soil health assessment by completing a questionnaire by 30 October 2025

👉 Questionnaire here lnkd.in/eDgkSJqF

Join us tomorrow for the soil cluster seminar of October! 10 o' clock in Orion B8020!

📣Dr. Noémie Janot, INRAE (France) & Dr. Sónia M. Rodrigues, Universidade de Aveiro and CESAM (Portugal) will guide us through the world of metal behaviour and availability in soil✨

See you there!

📣Publication alert: "Impacts of Nano- and Microplastic Contamination on Soil Organisms and Soil-Plant Systems" By Davi Munhoz&Nicolas Beirot (SLM)

Nano- & microplastics have detrimental effects on soil organisms&plants that vary according to various factors.

More info: www.mdpi.com/2673-8929/4/...

⁉️Curious about the papers led by the Soil Science cluster people published in the last 3 months? Here an overview of the words in the titles, the bigger they are the more frequently a word is mentioned..✨

🧐See something useful or interesting for you? don't hesitate to contact us: soilcluster@wur.nl

Jong geleerd... - Resource online Weekend van de Wetenschap bij WUR is vooral leuk voor kinderen.

Resource article on it: See:

www.resource-online.nl/index.php/20...

and

www.resource-online.nl/index.php/20...