Phosphorus (P) is a critical nutrient for plant growth, but conventional fertilizers often suffer from inefficiencies and environmental drawbacks.

Sindhu Jagadamma, associate professor of soil science at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, will receive the Soil and Water Conservation Society’s 2025 Conservation Research Award at the society’s annual conference in August.

Researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture studying the effects of the enormous amount of water and sediment left on agricultural land in the wake of Hurricane Helene flooding have won a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to continue their work and share their findings with farmers impacted by the widespread agricultural damage.

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded the grant of $275,000 to principal investigator and assistant professor Eminé Fidan and professor Shawn Hawkins, of the UT Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, and Annette Engel, an esteemed Jones professor of Aqueous Geochemistry in the UT Knoxville Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

While the majority of Midwestern farmers rotate corn and soybeans, commodity prices and corn yield advantages compel some to plant corn year after year. Although research on the benefits of corn-soybean rotation goes back decades, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scientists are addressing holistic questions about crop yield, environmental impacts, and economic returns under various crop rotation scenarios. 

A team led by Prof. Zhenke Zhu from Ningbo University analyzed 261 soil samples across China to systematically compare the impacts of different legume crop rotations on soil properties and microbial communities, revealing the unique advantages of faba bean (Vicia faba) rotation in enhancing soil multifunctionality and its microbial-driven mechanisms. The relevant paper has been published in Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering (DOI: 10.15302/J-FASE-2025604).