Adam Wightwick (PhD Student)
University of Queensland
Project Title
Managing
inputs of copper to viticultural soils for the protection of soil
fertility: risk assessment, prevention, and remediation
Biography
Adam
has completed a Bachelor of Applied Science (Honours) at the
University of Ballarat (Victoria) majoring in Food Science in 1999.
Since then he has worked as a research scientist with the
Department of Primary Industries, Victoria. Most of his work has
been centred around assisting farmers to adopt environment best
practices and to research the risks posed by the
off-target/off-site movement of chemicals applied on farm. Since
January 2008 Adam has taken study leave to undertake a PhD project
to further develop his research skills.
Start Date
January
2008
Project Details
Copper-based
fungicide use in vineyards has resulted in an accumulation of
copper in the surface soils potentially causing adverse effects to
soil organisms and the long-term fertility of the soil. In
Australian vineyards reported concentrations of copper in surface
soils have generally been in the range of 24 – 159 mg/kg but
as high as 249 mg/kg, compared with natural background copper
concentrations of less than ~20 mg/kg. This PhD project is
investigating copper bioavailability, the adverse effects of copper
accumulation on soil organisms, and the resilience of soil
ecosystems to increased copper. The aim is to determine whether the
use of copper fungicides poses an unacceptable risk to long-term
soil fertility in Australian vineyards. The project will also give
consideration to the risk management options if copper fungicides
are posing an acceptable risk, for example assessing whether
alternative fungicides are actually safer for the environment
and/or investigating the use of low cost in situ remediation
techniques (such as soil amendments) to reduce the bioavailability
of copper in the soil.The project is supervised by Prof Neal
Menzies (University of Queensland) and Dr Graeme Allinson
(Department of Primary Industries, Victoria).
