Lieke Lipsch

Research interests

I am interested in using a combination of bacteria and plants to clean our environment. As a doctoral researcher, I will focus on using cover crops for resilient soil microbiomes and improved nutrient retention. The goal of my project is to increase soil microbiome resilience towards manure-based hazards and simultaneously retain manure-based nutrients in the soil by growing cover crops during the intermittent seasons. We will test two cover crop mixtures on two agricultural soils in a pot experiment. Afterwards, a field experiment will be set up to test these cover crop mixtures in-situ. This way, I hope to gain a better understanding of the influence of cover crops on soil microbiome resilience and nutrient retention under manure application.