Tino Colombi receives medal for outstanding PhD thesis

Soil compaction is a major threat to global food security since it results in severe yield penalties that may persist for several years. Using multi-level phenotyping, which refers to the simultaneous quantification of multiple plant traits from the tissue to the canopy level, Tino investigated different strategies that can recover yield after a compaction event.

–  My results showed that novel soil management approaches such as soil perforation and functional root traits like a high number of roots and acute root tips may increase plant growth on compacted soil, says Tino.

Using crops to improve and maintain soil structure

At the moment, Tino is doing a post doc where he is addressing the the question about how we can use crops to improve and maintain soil structure and associated ecosystem services of arable land in the long term.

– While in my PhD I mostly looked at how the soil affects the plant, the major goal of my time at SLU is to better understand how plants affect and influence soil structure.  To do so, we aim to identify plant physiological processes that play a key role for soil structural dynamics, both at the species and the variety level, says Tino.

An "Outstanding thesis"

How does it feel then, to get an award for an “Outstanding thesis”?

–  I think “very surprised” and “extremely grateful to my advisor Professor Achim Walter” might describe it quite well. Surprised because I never expected this, and grateful because he and Thomas Keller, with whom I collaborated a lot, gave me so much scientific freedom and were open to all my ideas.