Meet Clara Tang, the Winner of this Year’s Young Investigator Scholarship
11/08/2016 3:12 PM
There were many worthwhile applicants, but Clara, a master’s student at North Carolina State, was chosen based on her proposed project - looking at exploring alternative ways to manage soils more sustainably and seeking to understand the impacts of the use of compost on soil health. Her project will evaluate the interactive effect of mycorrhiza and compost on soil and plant health by looking at the change in physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil and how that relates to plant growth. The main focus of the study will be to determine the changes in the microbial communities by contrasting sterilized treatments to non-sterilized and determining if the beneficial effects of compost and mycorrhiza are due solely to nutrient addition or also enhanced by the microorganism present in these amendments.