Identifying best practices to recommend to UK dairy farmers to minimise phosphorus loss and improve the efficiency of phosphorus use on their farms
Department: Animal Sciences
Supervised by: Partha Ray
In recent years diffuse phosphorus (P) loss from concentrated animal holdings has received great attention as a major contributor to water quality degradation and reduced aquatic biodiversity (i.e. eutrophication). Efforts in the UK have successfully reduced P fertiliser inputs into soil but to further minimise the accumulation of P in soil, we now need to reduce manure P inputs. Efficiently handling this P-dense manure without aggravating spatial imbalances in soil P is a challenge because of increasing concentrations of production per unit of land available and stores of legacy P in soil due to previous heavy fertiliser use, Therefore, DEFRA has recently suggested to consider soil Olsen-P before land application of manure. Olsen-P is a good indicator of P available to crops, but it does not consider slow release of P from legacy P pool in soil and thus fails to address the issue of P loss from soil to waterbodies. The issue of on-farm P surplus and subsequent environmental P loading could be tackled by developing and implementing best practices that will consider not only Olsen-P but also P from legacy P pool (total P). This project aims to determine the relationship between Olsen-P and total P (legacy P) to answer the question: ‘Should Olsen-P be used as a sole indicator of potential P loss from soil?’
The student will use the Acid Digestion of Plant Material (Allen et al.) method to prepare samples of feed, manure and soil collected from dairy farms across the UK for determination of total P content. The student will then quantify the total P content of the prepared samples using the SKALAR total phosphate automated analyser. Samples will also be analysed for Olsen P. The student will work under the supervision of Dr Partha Ray, PhD student Brad Harrison and with laboratory technicians from both the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development and SAGES. Specific tasks will include gaining theoretical knowledge by literature review, performing laboratory analyses and data processing and statistical analyses. Week 1: Literature review to become familiar with the cycling of P throughout a dairy farm (including within the cow and the soil), understand the protocol of analysing samples to determine total and Olsen P content and gain knowledge on the parameters which will indicate a reliable representation of soil P status while determining potential soil P loss. Week 2-5: Lab analysis training and lab analysis. Week 6: Data organisation and processing required for statistical analysis; statistical analysis of data using statistical software (e.g. Minitab). All samples and research components will be available before the start of the project.
The student should have an interest in agriculture, animal science and soil science. The student should have good analytical skills or should be able to learn wet chemistry techniques quickly. The student will be expected to organise and analyse data, and interpret results and thus should have good knowledge of MS Excel and Word, and statistics. The student should be able to work independently and as part of a team. The student should have very good time-management and organisation skills in order to achieve targets by the set timeline.
This placement will allow the student to develop both transferable and research-specific skills. The student will develop a broad range of strong research skills, such as reviewing scientific literature, use of wet chemistry technique to quantify total P content of samples, dataset preparation for statistical analysis and statistical analysis of data. The student will undertake research across multiple disciplines (e.g. animal science, soil science, and statistical analysis) and thus will have the opportunity to gain a set of multi-disciplinary employment skills. These include research, team-working, independent learning and working, time-management, report writing, organisational, problem solving, communication, analytical (laboratory-based) and statistical competencies. Work experience in a research environment as well as co-authorship of future publications will add value to the resume of the student for both academic and industry career path. To ensure accomplishment of set targets by the end of this placement, the student will be encouraged to prepare and maintain a daily and weekly task completion schedule.
Laboratories in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development and SAGES
7 hours per day, Monday to Friday
Monday 22 June 2020 - Friday 31 July 2020
The deadline to apply for this project is Monday 11th May at 5pm. Students should send a cover letter and CV to Dr Partha Ray (p.p.ray@reading.ac.uk). Applicants will be shortlisted for interview after the closing date. Successful candidates will then be invited to interview.