Plant-Soil Interactions

Course manual 2019/2020

Course content

One of the major challenges humanity faces is producing enough food for a burgeoning world population without destroying our environment. In the course Plant-soil interactions in food production systems you will get an understanding of the pressures and challenges global food production is facing, with a specific focus on the role of plant-soil interactions in these aspects. Almost every food production system depends on the interactions between plants and soils: soils underpin plant growth, but plants also modify soil properties. Plants and soils interact through a wide range of mechanisms. In this course, you will learn about the fundamental processes through which plants and soils interact, including both the biotic and abiotic components that govern these processes, and how these processes are affected by common agricultural practices and can provide solutions for the challenges global food production is facing.

Study materials

Literature

• Soil science by Scheffer and Schachtschabel

• Crop ecology by Connor, Loomis and Cassman

• Life (11th edition)

Practical training material

• Assignments for tutorials will be distributed at the start of the tutorial

Other

• Additional reading for each lecture can be found on Canvas under the individual lecture modules

Objectives

• Can explain the evolution of agricultural systems, including crop domestication, agricultural industrialisation, and how this has influenced fundamental plant and soil properties
• Can explain fundamental processes in the plant, how they are affected by agricultural practices, and how they relate to yield
• Can explain how soils are formed and can explain fundamental processes in the soil, including the behaviour and transformations of soil organic matter and macronutrients
• Can explain the above processes in the context of agricultural history and production, global biogeochemical cycling and pressures on global agro(ecosystems)
• Can describe the feedbacks between plant growth and soil functioning, their spatial and temporal scales, and how these can be harnessed for optimising sustainable food production

Teaching methods

• Lecture
• Self-study
• Seminar
• Presentation/symposium
• Working independently on e.g. a project or thesis

The lectures introduce and explain content and concepts.

Tutorials (seminars) are for deepening understanding  of the concepts explained in the lectures.

The group project and presentations has the aim of analysing and evaluating plant-soil interactions and their relevance in the real world.

Self-study will broaden and deepen understanding of concepts and mechanisms.

Learning activities

Attendance

Programme's requirements concerning attendance (OER-B):

• In case of practical sessions, the student is obliged to attend at least of 90% of the sessions and to prepare himself adequately, unless indicated otherwise in the course manual. In case the student attends less than 90%, the practical sessions should be redone entirely.
• In case of tutorials/seminars with assignments, the student is obliged to attend at least 90% of the tutorials/seminars and to prepare himself adequately, unless indicated otherwise in the course manual. In case the student attends less than 90%, the course cannot be finished

Additional requirements for this course:

The student has to attend at least 10 out of the 12 tutorials (werkcolleges).

Assessment

Assessment diagram

Inspection of assessed work

After the exam, the course coordinator will notify the students about time slots available to inspect their work and request feedback.

Assignments

Tutorial assignments

During the tutorials, the students will make individual assignments designed to broaden and deepen their understanding of the topics and concepts explained in the lectures. Feedback will be given during the tutorials by PhD students/junior docenten and Teaching Assistants delivering the tutorial.

Poster

The group work will consist of selecting and visiting a farm, with the purpose of understanding the relevance of plant-soil interactions for real-world farming systems. This will be done in groups of five, and the final product will be presented during a poster session in week 7. All students will be expected to be able to give detailed and in-depth answers to questions about the poster and will be tested on their understanding of the relevance of plant-soil interactions in their chosen farm. Normally, all students in a group will get the same grade, unless there is good reason to divert from this.Feedback will be given during the poster session and on the completed mark form.

Written exam

The written exam will be in week 8 and covers the material discussed during the lectures as well as the exercises practiced during the working groups. Thus, it will be a mixture of testing factual knowledge and insights, and the ability to solve scientific problems of plant-soil interactions. Feedback can be requested after the exam.

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Timetable

The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.

Last year's course evaluation

In order to provide students some insight how we use the feedback of student evaluations to enhance the quality of education, we decided to include the table below in all course guides.

Contact information

Coordinator

• prof. dr. ir. Franciska de Vries