Thesis subject
Elucidating the underlying soil biology drivers in disease suppressive soils to help fighting pests
Plant diseases, including root-feeding nematodes, viral, bacterial, fungal and protist taxa, are a major threat of agricultural production. Fighting them is increasingly difficult and often linked to unwanted environmental pollution. Some soils, however, have natural suppression capacity against pests but this phenomenon is barely manipulatable or predictable.
You can help to elucidate this unknown potential present in soil. In field and greenhouse experiments in ambient and global change conditions you will perform multiple physicochemical analyses and especially molecular sequencing approaches in order to find disease suppressive agents present in the microbiome. You can also choose to take the next step and cultivate and experimentally assess potentially disease suppressive organisms, which we particularly envision in synthetic communities (SynComs) consisting of different bacteria, fungi and their microbial predatory protists.
In conclusion, you could play a big role in elucidating the drivers of suppressiveness and therefore in finding new biocontrol agents against various plant pests.