Amelioration of subsoil acidity in highly-weathered tropical soils

Subsoil acidity can be neutralized by mechanically incorporating lime to depth, but this is not practical on a large scale. An alternative approach, which we propose to test in this project, is to leach base cations provided by surface-applied lime into the subsoil to neutralise acidity, exploiting acid-tolerant crop genotypes to help capture the leached bases in the subsoil. We will test the above ideas with a combination of experiments under controlled conditions and mathematical modelling of the leaching and acidity amelioration process. We will do the experiments with soils imported from Madagascar, exploiting connections to a project on technologies for highly-weathered soils run by our collaborators. The studentship will be based in the Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute (CSAFI) at our main campus in Bedfordshire, with some time at Bangor University. CSAFI has 18 academics covering all aspects of soil science, currently with 20 post-doctoral researchers and 40 PhD students. We work closely with many other universities and research organizations in the UK and internationally. We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate to learn experimental, theoretical and modelling aspects of soil science as part of our growing multi-disciplinary team.