Mr Matthias Salomon

I am a recent PhD graduate of the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. The title of my thesis is "Soil health in urban agriculture with an emphasis on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi", which was supervised by Prof. Timothy Cavagnaro, Dr. Stephanie Watts-Williams and Prof. Michael McLaughlin.

As the world population is going to increase over the next decades and global farmland is becoming more scarce, I do believe that urban agriculture can be an answer to many of our food security problems. Bringing food production back into the city and putting producers and consumers together has many advantages. However, being in an urban environment can be challenging when it comes to soil health.

In my research I analyzed the chemical and biological properties of urban agriculture soils and how we can improve this system. I also looked at a group of little helpers called mycorrhizal fungi. Those fungi live in symbiosis with plant roots and help delivering water and nutrients.