About the project

Five researchers: Christina van Midden, Nicolas Beriot, Tanvi Taparia, Michael Lӧbmann, Emma Burak came together to answer a call from the British Society of Soil Science on Interdisciplinary Grants for Early Career Researchers and Professionals during the 2021 Eurosoil conference. With their newly awarded project, they have developed a fun and interactive board game that will help bridge the gap between soil health and sustainability. The game requires no expert knowledge of soil science to understand and enjoy the game.

Meet the Team

Christina van Midden

Christina is a soil biologist with an interest in the biogeochemistry of soils in environmental environments with a focus on: -improving agricultural sustainability -improving soil health by applying organic amendments -communication and outreach @vanMidden_C

Nicolas Beriot

Nicolas studies soil contamination in agriculture. Since 2021 he works at Wageningen University for the project MINAGRIS assessing the plastic contamination in European Farms.

Tanvi Taparia

Tanvi works in the development of sustainable and systemic solutions to facilitate the green transition in agriculture, via research & communication. As a scientist, she harnesses the potential of microbes associated with modern crops. She has over seven years of research experience spanning across universities in Sweden (SLU), Netherlands (WUR), Denmark (UCPH) and India (IISc). In her research, she applies molecular and microbial methods in the plant-soil interface to promote crop growth and health. She is presently leading the Plant-microbiome group at the University of Copenhagen. As a communicator, she is deeply involved in outreach and popular-science. She has organised countless events, scientific conferences, research networks, workshops and activities in different countries. She has co-founded and runs the Postdoc Network at the University of Copenhagen.

Michael Lӧbmann

Michael is an agroecologist and transdisciplinary food systems researcher who tries to merge diverse scientific knowledge to develop practice friendly sustainable solutions together with practitioners and stakeholders

Emma Burak

Emma's background is in soil science with a PhD focusing on the interactions between plant and soil. She is currently acting as a knowledge bridge between Cranfield university and Yara UK to collaboratively explore the efficacy and viability of organo-mineral fertilisers as a commercially available product in the UK. She is not only interested in assessing the ability of organo-mineral fertilisers to deliver comparable yields as conventional alternatives but also in their effect on the environmental. She is investigating their impact on the soil and measuring their capacity for restorative agriculture. She is also interested in their wider impact on the environment by assessing their gaseous emissions and testing their susceptibility as a pollutant to water courses. Her role also extends to gathering knowledge relating to the production of organo-mineral fertiliser in the UK. This includes assessing the availability and mapping potential feedstocks as well as experimenting with different feedstocks to determine which recipes have the most desirable characteristics.