I come from Santiago de Chile (South America), a landscape surrounded by vineyards and crop fields in the middle of an utmost diverse biogeography, from the Atacama Desert to the Patagonian ice fields. The challenge of reaching sustainable development side by side with the preservation of natural resources led me to Antofagasta (a coast city near the Atacama desert) during my BSc in biochemistry to study extremophile soil bacterial inoculants for the remediation of heavily polluted soils. I was so amazed by the soil ecosystems that I decided to make it my career focus. From there I moved to Valparaíso (a temperate region with heavy agricultural activity) for a master’s in microbiology, where we tested an extremophile PGPR inoculum to induce tolerance to heavy metal pollution in tomato plants and studied the changes in the rhizosphere searching for ecological insights into the plant-soil interaction behind this intervention. Our results were promising! Yet, the gap between lab and real-word use of bio-based soil technologies is still the biggest challenge to solve. SOILProS project aims to bridge this gap, which makes it the perfect environment to keep going.

Since October 2023 I work as PhD student for the SOILProS project in the Plant-Soil Ecology (PSECO) lab of the University of Amsterdam. My research here focuses on the soil ecological functions (mainly nutrient-related) and how they can be steered by different agricultural interventions. Our efforts are directed to uncover mechanistic relationships underlying these dynamics. We believe the soil microbiome is a central piece of this puzzle. We hope the more we know about the nature of these relationships, the more we can improve the crop yield in a sustainable manner.