Description of Soil Nutrient Cycling
Photo: Anke Herrmann

Soil nutrient cycling

Page reviewed:  16/06/2025

In the context of global food and water security, current concerns of climate change and environmental degradation, soil functioning plays a crucial role. Our research focuses on furthering our understanding of complex process-interactions from the microbial soil habitat scale to the field-scale.

Soils store, modulate the release of, and cycle nutrients required for plant growth. They are one of the most complex systems on Earth. Nutrient cycling in soil is mediated by multifaceted, inseparable interactions among biological, chemical and physical dynamics.

Important soil interactions

These interactions result in remarkable spatial heterogeneity across scales of many orders of magnitude over timescales that range from seconds to millennia. Our research focuses on furthering our understanding of complex process-interactions from the microbial soil habitat scale to the field-scale.

Soils are fundamental to all human civilizations: they underpin the delivery of a wide range of life-supporting ecosystem goods and services. In the context of global food and water security, current concerns of climate change and environmental degradation, soil functioning plays a crucial role.

More efficient agriculture

The rapidly growing world population is putting pressure on food supply. Agriculture therefore needs to adopt practices for efficient use of nutrients to ensure food security while minimizing negative impacts on agroecosystems, thus making these practises sustainable in the long‐term. Therefore, the sustainable management of nutrient cycling in agricultural systems is a matter of increasing importance to society and is key to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.

Research Themes

  • Soil, microbe, and plant interactions
  • Circular resource management
  • Plant nutrient management
  • Pedometrics and precision agriculture 
  • Soil organic matter dynamics

Our work builds on basic ecological theory in investigating effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on soil communities and ecosystem functioning, with a particular focus on the role of coupled plant-microbe interactions in driving soil nutrient cycling.

Our research approach encompasses several disciplines, including microbial ecology, biogeochemistry and community ecology, both using field and controlled experiments. By combining measurements of microbial potential activity using methods such as enzyme assays, community profiling, and meta-omics with measurements of soil carbon and nutrient stocks and flows, we aim to understand the roles that microbes play in biogeochemical cycles.

Much of our work is conducted in Sweden, with significant past and present research also in other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, North America and elsewhere in Europe.   

Current projects focus on:

  • Climate-smart resilience through diversified cropping systems – Identifying springboards in Nordic and Baltic agriculture  (AgroMixNorth)  
  • Impact of land-use on soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes in grasslands  
  • Potential of organic inputs from agroforestry tree biomass to improve soil nutrients content in Eastern Africa.   
  • Microbial communities involved in the production and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions   

If you wish to collaborate or are looking for a bachelor or master thesis project do not hesitate to contact us.  

Plant nutrients are removed with crops harvested from agricultural fields. These nutrients then end up in manure, household waste, waste from food industry and in sewage sludge. There are also other resources from forest and fishery that are rich in plant nutrients. Our research includes how different treatments of such residues may improve the properties to be able to use them as fertilizers.

We also look at different technology and application strategies to apply organic fertilizers in the field to maximise the efficiency and minimise losses to the environment. We use lab incubations, pot experiments, field experiments and farm studies depending on the type of research question. We measure nitrogen turnover in soil, crop yield and quality, gas emissions and leaching.   

Current research projects focus on: 

  • Improved nitrogen efficiency with different cattle slurry treatments (Circular NP)

Plant nutrition serves as a linchpin for achieving a multitude of UN sustainability goals, bridging the gap between agricultural practices, human well-being, and the conservation of our planet's precious resources. At the Soil Nutrient Cycling division, we delve deep into the heart of agriculture and environmental science, focusing on one of nature's most essential processes - the nourishment of plants.   

Our mission is rooted to unlock the mysteries of how plants access and utilize nutrients, providing vital insights to optimize crop production, enhance food quality, and foster sustainable ecosystems. In a world where environmental challenges and food security are of paramount concern, our work is more critical than ever.   

Our work further focuses on how to optimize nutrient availability for crops, maintain the quality and nutrient content of the food and to preserve the ecosystems and biodiversity by minimizing soil and water pollution. 

We are also responsible for managing and digitalizing data of 24 long-term field trials across Sweden focusing on plant nutrition and soil fertility. Researchers are welcome to use published data. For any further questions regarding the long-term field trial, please use the following email: soilnutrientcycling@slu.se . 

Current research projects: 

  • ScanOats: An industrial research consortium with oat in focus.  
  • Fertilization with minimized nitrous oxide emissions under Swedish conditions.
  • Phosphorus in long-term field trials -  A basis for updated fertilisation recommendations.

If you wish to collaborate or are looking for a bachelor or master thesis project do not hesitate to contact us.

Well-adapted management is key to sustainable intensification of crop production. With this aim, we conduct research on how to optimize crop management practices to local and current conditions. The spatial scale is often within-fields.  

A prerequisite is that crop and soil information can be collected in an efficient and timely manner. Thus, covering questions on how to measure, model, map and monitor soil and crop properties in various spatial and temporal scales. Often, this includes the use of proximal and remote sensing techniques. Equally important is that the information can be transferred into the understanding of the local soil crop system and explain for example yield limiting factors and environmental risks.  

In the end, for any sustainable intensification to actually happen, knowledge, data and methods needs to be implemented in practical agriculture – we need to bring research to practice. Within our Laboratory for Agricultural Decision Support Systems (LADS) we collaborate with the industry on how to provide results in an actionable format. 

Pedometrics is the application of mathematical and statistical methods to the study of the distribution and genesis of soils and together with digital soil and crop mapping it is a fundamental tool in the development and implementation of precision agriculture (PA). PA was defined by The International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA) as “... a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production.”  

Some of our current projects: 

  • EJP Soil STEROPES: Stimulating Novel Technologies from Earth Remote Observation to Predict European Soil carbon 
  • EJP Soil ProbeField: A novel protocol for robust in field monitoring of carbon stocks and soil fertility based on proximal sensors and existing soil spectral libraries 
  • EJP Soil PRAC2LIV: Fostering soil management PRACtices and uptake and developing decision support TOols through LIVing labs in EU 
  • Baby Grain Passport - Spårbar och hållbar produktion av spannmål för barnmat
  • Tillämpningsklivet Precisionsodling: Forskning & samverkan för hållbar växtodling 
  • Yield levels and optimal fertilization close to field edges
    Sattelite-based yield mapping

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