Today we have finally completed the sampling campaign for growing season 2023 in our long-term agricultural biochar experiments in Viikki, Helsinki. The growing season was challenging once again with extreme droughts in May and June, and quite some rains in August-September, but once we got the yields collected, we were happy and concluded that the harvesting was, as usual, lots of fun. We are very lucky to have Camille Michel from UniLaSalle, France as a visiting student to help with all the sampling campaigns and later in autumn, with lab work!
After the harvest, we took soil samples of different kinds to see the effects of differently activated biochars on soil carbon, bacteria and fungi, available nutrients but also on water retention curve, greenhouse gas emissions and mineral nitrogen content. All this is part of Samuel Amoah's doctoral thesis.
For the first time since 2015, we also looked into the effects of biochar and fertilizer treatments on earthworms. This is part of the research of our group member Zannatul Ferdous and we were glad this time we had the chance to perform the sampling during rainy days with class: Department of Agricultural Sciences supported us with a brand-new tent for field sampling! Earthworm sampling was completed much quicker than anticipated thanks to motivated team by Zannatul, Camille and also our newest group member, visiting researcher Sharifa Nabavi from Iran. But for the first sampling day, many more AgriChar members gathered to the field for enjoying the good company and learning tips and tricks about earthworm research from Jure. Thanks to all for the nice moments on fields and let's now focus on the lab work. Looking forward for the results!
