RESEARCH PROJECT
Towards better risk assessment of cadmium in agricultural soil for sustainable nutrient management
Updated: February 2026
Project overview
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Short summary
The goal of this project is to improve knowledge about cadmium in soil so that we can better assess how much recycled material can be added to the soil without causing risks to humans and the environment.
In different sub-projects we study:
- How to improve estimates of cadmium leaching by calibrating a process-based model against data for environmentally realistic conditions. This requires an increased understanding of the binding mechanisms of cadmium in the soil.
- How the uptake of cadmium in different crops can be predicted based on soil chemical factors such as cadmium content, organic carbon content, pH and the composition of the soil water.
- How much cadmium a large variety of ashes, digestates and sludges actually contain and how easily the cadmium can be dissolved from the materials and thus made available for uptake.
The results from subprojects 1, 2 and 3 are used to create a web-based tool for calculating how much ash, digestate and sludge can be added without increasing the cadmium content in soil.