Soil Health: Opening the Black Box in Specialty Crop Production Systems
Soil health is now widely regarded as the foundation for sustainable production systems. This presentation will provide evidence to support this assertion by summarizing results of recent studies demonstrating clear relationships between soil management practices, soil microbial communities, nutrient cycling and susceptibility of crops to plant and human pathogens. Strategies that growers can use to improve the health of their soils and better support beneficial microbial inoculants will also be covered.
Speaker

Lori Hoagland
Dr. Hoagland holds an MS in Agroecology and a PhD in Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Washington State University, respectively. She joined the faculty at Purdue University in 2010 in a newly created position focused on developing more sustainable specialty crop production systems. Her research program aims to address this challenge by identifying practical ways to support beneficial soil microbiomes while also developing new crop cultivars with the capacity to functionally interact with these organisms. In 2019, she served as a visiting professor at the National University of Colombia-Bogota supported by the Fulbright Scholar Program, and in 2021, assumed the role of co-Director and lead PI of the Arequipa Nexus Institute, a unique partnership aimed at supporting challenges facing the food-energy-water nexus in southern Peru. In her time at Purdue, she has taught courses in Plant Propagation, Plant Microbiomes, and Urban Agriculture.