Carbon Micro Cycling

Harriet Mella

My educational pathway as a biologist began when I completed my thesis on mycoparasites and did PhD work on prions. With this background I began a journey discovering the laboratory methods that were popular at that time - from light microscopy and electron microscopy to tissue culture, fluorescence assisted cell sorting and DNA based methods. But what really got me into biology is a love for all living beings, their fascinating structures and interactions. I very much enjoy zooming in to the different levels of organisation - subcellular, cellular, organisms, ecosystems - and observing the wisdom in which these integrate together. I always gravitated towards the “phytopathological corner” – botany, mycology, microbiology, plant physiology, biochemistry – working often on interdisciplinary topics. E.g. the gut microbiome, which was at that time not recognized in its importance. Or the processes when plants become infected with microbial pathogens, - the structures, the secondary metabolites and the communication processes between the host and the pathogen. My second journey into agriculture began 15 years ago with a self-sufficiency project in Austria. I was very disappointed with the quality of my produce – comparing it with my taste experiences on the biodynamic farms in Australia and the memories of my mother’s garden. It turned out the flavor I remembered was not nostalgia, but a goal that could be achieved by a combination of heirloom vegetables and improved cultural practices. From the experiences I had during my travels I always had a special interest in low-budget agro-ecological methods. One sentence in a book especially struck me: “In Africa dishwashing water is often the sole fertilizer” - and working. It did not make sense to me that compared to the situation in Africa we should be confined to a high input agriculture in a much more favorable temperate climate with all the known ecological side effects. In the low budget agricultural arena there are mainly two major practices I found to make a big difference to plant health and quality: influencing the soil microbiome and the shortcut to nutrition through foliar feeding. I found the common approaches of “amending only” and “pest control” through poison frustrating as the result on yield was unpredictable and the effect on the environment was predictable to be bad. Trained in systemic thinking, I set out to seek better ways and ended up with nutritional approaches. In small-scale agriculture, with many different species and varieties, these work only in a structured, humus-rich soil. This took me to the next task to return the scientific knowledge into the existing agricultural approaches for a better management of “carbon farming” So I began to research alternatives. The approaches of the Francé’s to promote lithobionts into agriculture are a fascinating opportunity in that respect. One project out of curiosity is to analyze the manifold approaches that have been found to improve yield (from sound, dishwashing agent to overcompensation methods) and find out the mechanisms behind them.

1 Course