Reducing Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions ‘RAGGE’

Nitrogen inputs into agricultural systems are an essential requirement for healthy, high yielding crop production, but they can also result in the release of excess N either by leaching or by emission of the highly reactive greenhouse gas (GHG) N2O. In the UK, direct N2O emissions from soil accounted for about 50.5% of all N2O released in 2016. This is not only damaging to the environment, it is also a financial loss to the farmer and a lost nutrient resource to the growing crops. With the use of state of the art real-time GHG detection systems (monitoring N2O, NH3, CH4, CO2 and O2 emissions) and advanced molecular and sequencing methods for detecting, expression profiling and sequencing genes involved in N-cycling and GHG emission, this project aims to understand which environmental drivers are involved in GHG emissions and identify mitigation strategies for their reduction.

Applicants should hold a minimum of a UK Honours Degree at 2:1 level or equivalent in subjects such as Environmental Science, Natural Sciences or biology. Experience in the laboratory is desired.

For further details please contact Dr Tim Mauchline tim.mauchline@rothamsted.ac.uk or Ian Clark ian.clark@rothamsted.ac.uk.