Our research program focuses on soil biochemistry, microbiology and environmental soil chemistry:

• Management of The Triplett-VanDoren No-Tillage Experimental Plots that were established in 1962. These plots have been in continuous corn or in rotation with soybeans and oats and represent more than 40 years of no-tillage data . As a result, we can learn many things about the impact of no-tillage on soil processes, production of crops , insect and weed responses, and other fundamental soil-plant interactions.
  
  
• Use of soil enzyme activity assays to monitor changes and overall general quality of a soil. This involves developing new methods for measuring enzyme activities and assessing how they affect the function of the soil. For example, we have recently developed an assay to measure myrosinase activity in soil. Myrosinase is an enzyme involved in releasing allelopathic compounds into the soil.
  
  
• Study of microbial communities in soil using culture and nonculture methods. Microbial communities have been characterized in wetlands receiving acid mine drainage and in soils where enhanced degradation of the herbicide EPTC occurs. These studies involve extraction of total microbial community DNA from soils and then amplifying specific genes, often the 16s RNA gene, to identify microbial community members.
  
  

• Nitrogen, sulfur and carbon cycling in soil. This includes studies of denitrification in soils as affected by tillage and cropping systems, carbon sequestration under long-term no-tillage and sulfur cycling in surface coal mined areas.
  
  
• Beneficial recycling of "solid wastes." Many by-products of our agricultural, industrial and municipal activities have value if they are properly characterized and utilized. A large amount of effort has focused on developing beneficial uses of coal combustion products for agriculture, for mineland reclamation, for engineering purposes and as a raw material in creation of manufactured products.
  
  
• Use of Brassica cover crops for biological weed control. No-tillage is a well-known soil building and soil protecting crop production system. Many people, however, are opposed to no-tillage because of its reliance on herbicides for weed control. We are conducting studies using cover crops that exhibit allelopathic properties that biologically control weeds. The cover crops are killed in the winter by cold weather. Production crops are directly seeded, via no-tillage, into the residue mat that is created by the cover crop.
  
  
• Other miscellaneous activities have included studies of
  • Siderophore production in compost amended soils
  • Fate of animal pathogens that enter the soil via manure applications
  • Development of tools to study the molecular biology of Rhodococcus spp.
  • Surface water quality as impacted by strip mining and agricultural activities
  • Biological disease control of plants using compost

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