wo PhD positions at Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering (DTU Chemical Engineering, Campus Roskilde) are available within a new project (MiCroP) funded by The Danish Council for Strategic Research. MiCroP aims at using microbial inoculants as efficient biofertilizers to mobilize phosphorus from soil, rock, and untreated or gasified organic waste. The project consortium involves partners from DTU-KT, KU-Science, Novozymes, Knowledge Center for Agriculture, and international partners from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.
Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient and limits plant growth in many soils. Since global commercially available P stocks will eventually become scarce and phosphate production costs are likely to increase, novel agricultural approaches to secure sustainable plant P nutrition are urgently needed. These should address the fertilizer value of recycled wastes and ensure a more efficient crop use of P. Recently, microbial biofertilizers based on phosphate solubilizing microorganisms (PSM) have been marketed to improve plant P nutrition, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.
We hypothesize that the performance of biofertilizers can be improved by a deeper knowledge of P solubilization mechanisms, and by exploiting synergies between various microorganisms including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Furthermore, we expect that biofertilizer technologies can be utilized to enhance plant access to P from waste streams. This approach would enable sustainable P-use in food and feed production, and thereby have a great impact on agriculture and food prices, also in a global perspective.
The two PhD projects focus on plant utilization of P in bioashes, as well as the effect of PSM and AMF and their expected synergies in plant P-access. The bioashes rich in plant nutrients result from low-temperature gasification of waste materials, a technology that provides bioenergy with high efficiency and simultaneously hygienizes the waste. It is hypothesized that the bioash can eventually be used as matrix for commercial formulations of biofertilizer products.
Deadline, March 1, 2014
For more information go to Technical University of Denmark
For application go to the online application facility
For more similar scholarships visit http://scholarships-opportunities.blogspot.com/
Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient and limits plant growth in many soils. Since global commercially available P stocks will eventually become scarce and phosphate production costs are likely to increase, novel agricultural approaches to secure sustainable plant P nutrition are urgently needed. These should address the fertilizer value of recycled wastes and ensure a more efficient crop use of P. Recently, microbial biofertilizers based on phosphate solubilizing microorganisms (PSM) have been marketed to improve plant P nutrition, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.
We hypothesize that the performance of biofertilizers can be improved by a deeper knowledge of P solubilization mechanisms, and by exploiting synergies between various microorganisms including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Furthermore, we expect that biofertilizer technologies can be utilized to enhance plant access to P from waste streams. This approach would enable sustainable P-use in food and feed production, and thereby have a great impact on agriculture and food prices, also in a global perspective.
The two PhD projects focus on plant utilization of P in bioashes, as well as the effect of PSM and AMF and their expected synergies in plant P-access. The bioashes rich in plant nutrients result from low-temperature gasification of waste materials, a technology that provides bioenergy with high efficiency and simultaneously hygienizes the waste. It is hypothesized that the bioash can eventually be used as matrix for commercial formulations of biofertilizer products.
Deadline, March 1, 2014
For more information go to Technical University of Denmark
For application go to the online application facility
For more similar scholarships visit http://scholarships-opportunities.blogspot.com/
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