Melanie Derby
Kansas State University, KS·Engineering
Droughts are becoming more frequent and severe in the Central High Plains, where agriculture in Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma is worth tens of billions of dollars a year. In October 2022, nearly all of these three states were in drought.
- Fields
Engineering
Plant Science & Agriculture
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
drought
soil moisture
water retention
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the way soil-wetting bacteria Bacillus subtilis spread water through soil depends on soil type, starting moisture, soil water-repellency and application method, using lab, greenhouse and field experiments.
- Build genome-scale metabolic models, computer models of a microbe's chemistry built from its genes, to predict how B. subtilis interacts with soil and affects soil wetting and evapotranspiration.
- Test whether B. subtilis surfactants, which lower water's surface tension, combined with biochar, which clumps soil particles, improve soil water retention in corn under deficit irrigation.
- Measure how these soil additives change nutrient transformations and the rhizobiome, the community of microbes around plant roots, in corn grown with reduced watering.
- Test whether farmers with sandier, lower-quality soils and limits on historical water use are more willing to adopt precision irrigation, using surveys and focus groups.
More about the research
This project asks whether adding certain bacteria and charcoal-like material to soil can help it hold water, so crops such as corn can cope with less rain and irrigation. It also asks how farmers decide whether to adopt new irrigation practices. It is a collaboration among Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Langston University, with engineers, scientists, agricultural scientists and social scientists.
Why it matters
Farmers and rural communities in drought-prone Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma could benefit if inexpensive soil additives help soils hold more water and keep corn productive with less irrigation. The survey findings on farmers' willingness to adopt precision irrigation under different water rights and policies could help agencies design water policy and support programs that farmers will actually take up.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Zakary Ratajczak
Kansas State University, KS·Ecology & Evolution
Test multiple rainout shelter designs at Konza Prairie to determine whether bison use areas under shelters at similar rates as unsheltered areas, by quantifying bison use and activity.
Daniel Robertson
University of Idaho, ID·Plant Science & Agriculture
Automate high-throughput phenotyping of cereal stalks, meaning fast trait measurements across many plants, to overcome the shortage of measured plants compared with millions of genetic markers.
William Likos
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Engineering
Formulate a theory based on a generalized soil water potential, combining capillarity and adsorption, that predicts pore water pressure and ice formation in freezing soil.
The school
Kansas State University: 7 labs on PI Pages, $265M a year on research, 201 research doctorates a year.
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