ABSTRACT

Supporting rural communities in the Central High Plains region of the Midwest is critical. Agriculture is responsible for direct economic impacts of $21.3B, $26.3B, and $7.6B in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, respectively (USDA ERS data for 2021). This agricultural region is facing increased frequency and severity of drought due to climate change; as an example, in October 2022, 100% of Nebraska, 98.5% of Kansas, and 100% of Oklahoma experienced drought conditions, according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: U.S. Drought Monitor. The MICRA project brings together researchers from Kansas State University (KSU), the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and Langston University (LU) with a wide range of expertise (e.g., engineering, science, agricultural science, and social science). The project team will conduct research with the goal to preserve soil moisture and improve water quality under drought conditions. Corn is the target crop for study due to its economic importance in the Midwest, and its substantial demand for water and nutrients. Researchers will investigate the impacts of adding amendments to improve the soil (i.e., soil wetting bacteria, Bacillus subtilis, and biochar); understand plants? behavior in response to drought; understand the impacts of climate change on agricultural workers; and determine farmers' willingness to adopt new irrigation practices relative to differing water rights and policies. The MICRA project will investigate the impacts of soil amendments at the lab-scale, greenhouse-scale, and field-scale, and will conduct surveys and focus groups. The MICRA team will recruit students from historically excluded groups; mentor and train undergraduate and graduate students to conduct interdisciplinary research; teach interdisciplinary courses at the graduate level; support early career faculty at KSU, UNL, and LU; and conduct educational outreach to rural K-12 science teachers.

The MICRA team will generate fundamental knowledge regarding the impacts of soil amendments (i.e., soil wetting bacteria, B. subtilis, and biochar) to increase the water holding capacity of soil, thereby improving agroecosystem productivity as water becomes more limited due to climate-change-driven droughts. Interdisciplinary research is focused in three research thrusts. Research Thrust 1 will test the hypothesis that spatial and temporal soil wetting behavior of B. subtilis is driven by soil type, initial soil moisture levels, soil hydrophobicity, and administration methods, thereby generating new knowledge regarding soil wetting, evapotranspiration, and development of predictive, genome-scale metabolic models for soil-microbial interactions. The central hypothesis of Thrust 2 is that B. subtilis-mediated surfactant production (i.e., which changes the surface tension of water), when combined with biochar-mediated soil aggregation, can synergistically improve soil water retention. Thrust 2 will determine the impacts of soil wetting bacteria and biochar on water-holding capacity, nutrient transformation, and the rhizobiome under deficit irrigation. Thrust 3 focuses on the hypotheses that producers (i.e., farmers) having lower quality soils (e.g., high sand content) will be more willing to adopt new precision irrigation technologies and practices, particularly in regions where curtailments to historical water use amounts have been put in place. Focus group and survey data will yield fundamental insights regarding irrigator?s perceptions regarding soil amendments and irrigation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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