Lumen Waite 100 - Flipbook - Page 45
“I’m trying to understand how different
cover cropping mixes influence almond orchards,” he says. “We’ve got one trial site in
Loxton in the Riverland and one near Griffith
in New South Wales. We’re putting a lot of
money into sensors at our primary site in the
Riverland, and we’re gearing up for a lot of
data collection over the next few years.”
Thomas’s work includes industry outreach.
“The general angle is that farmers and
growers need to think about the decisions
they’re making that influence the soil,” he
says. “You don’t have to maintain really tight
control over everything by using heaps of herbicides; instead, you can have groundcovers
and if you select a good mix of species and
allow them to establish an ecosystem, you can
get a lot of benefits without the downsides traditionally ascribed to having weeds in a vineyard or orchard.”
It’s a long game.
“It’s really tricky. For almonds, their
lifespan is 30 years, so if you want to make
a big change, you don’t want to pull the trees
out and start again. Having said that, almond
growers are extremely interested in developments and better ways of doing things,”
Thomas says. “Fundamentally, if you’ve got
roots in the ground, as opposed to bare earth,
then those plants are putting beneficial com-
pounds into the soil and building life there. If
you have life in the ground, it has the capacity
to help the other plants; it provides habitat for
fungi and microbes.”
On the whole, Thomas is optimistic about
the direction in which Australian agriculture
is going. “It’s a real gear change to shift from
controlling a thing to within an inch of its life
– almost like a ‘hydroponics in the soil’ sort of
system – to a place where you’re working with
an ecosystem rather than against it,” he says.
Nearby, the team at the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) is also
focused on future-proofing. Associate Professor Ben Sparrow, Program Lead of TERN’s
Ecosystem Surveillance Research Infrastructure, leads a team of approximately 30 people
devoted to collecting data for scientists. The
result is a comprehensive national soil library
of sorts, stored in a large shed, tucked away
on the Waite campus.
The samples were meticulously collected
over more than 10 years, and the world-class
research infrastructure helps scientists monitor changes to the environment and climate.
The volume of samples is astounding.
“My team here works on monitoring
changes to Australian environments by
collecting standardised information on
soil and vegetation from across the whole
LUMEN
continent,” Ben says. “We’ve enabled some
pretty amazing research using the samples
and data that we’ve collected. The idea is that
anyone can access the data online, or apply to
use our physical samples – from academics to
land managers.”
The important work also helps to enable
predictions of future risks.
“It’s not about what we find, it’s more about
what we enable others to find,” Ben says. “I’m
one of the earlier employees on the team, and
I was really involved with helping design what
we do and what we measure. I get a fair bit of
satisfaction when people use the data or the
samples we have collected for things you never intended, especially when they find some
really exciting results.”
Though there are problems to be solved
and potential to be unlocked, the future of
Australian soil is in good hands at the Waite.
“Some of the best global talent has studied
here or are still here educating the next generation of people,” Ehsan says. “They are the
next generation and arrive with ideas, enthusiasm, and a hardworking attitude.”
